


like a work of art

by gentlyqueer



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora works at an art museum as a security guard, And a quick cameo by Kyle later, Art Museum AU, Catra's an art student, F/F, Modern AU, Rating M just to be safe idk, They're in their mid-20s bc grad school and going back to school, also feat. Lonnie as wingman, and an aspiring tattoo artist, brief mentions of Bow and Glimmer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlyqueer/pseuds/gentlyqueer
Summary: Adora lagged a few steps behind Catra, wanting to appreciate the time they had together. Something in the way she moved was like a work of art: the way her hips swayed gently as she walked, the slight tilt to her head as she scanned the paintings, how her fingers absentmindedly ran through her messy short hair.Despite working in the museum for a year and a half, Adora had never considered herself qualified to appreciate art.Maybe being around Catra was changing that.--Adora’s a security guard at an art museum, and she befriends the art student leaving mysterious notes for her after work.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 126
Kudos: 448





	1. Chapter 1

Adora’s job was boring.

She didn’t hate it, and for that, she was grateful. She knew too many friends that graduated college and then were stuck in dead-end jobs outside of their intended careers. Jobs that sucked the life and soul out of you while making minimum wage. Luckily, Adora’s job wasn’t like that. It was just… boring.

When new acquaintances found out that she worked as a security guard at an art museum, it inevitably led to the same barrage of questions. They’d always ask: Do you get bored? _Yes._ So you just get paid to look at paintings all day? _No, actually._ Can you get me into the museum for free? _I get like 5 free tickets a year, but now that you asked, definitely not._

Some aspects of her job were more interesting than others. One of her favorite things was special events; there was something magical about being in the museum after dark, even though the days were long and the guests were often drunk. And truth be told, she did enjoy looking at the art. After walking by it enough times, though, she sometimes tuned it out. There were things to do to keep her occupied, of course; she had to pay just enough attention to her radio to respond if needed. But most days were quiet. She helped lost kids find their parents, directed museum visitors who were lost, and monitored the surveillance systems. She’d been trained on what to do in case of an emergency, like a fire or other evacuation. On the first day, her trainer had told her proudly that they’d never once had a collection piece stolen (she’d wondered if that was common enough elsewhere that it needed to be bragged about). They’d said that it was much more likely that someone would try to steal things from the museum gift shop than the galleries.

Some days, she almost _wished_ for a thrilling art heist, just so that she could actually have some excitement.

If she had to choose, she’d always prefer being in the galleries to monitoring the surveillance systems. Luckily, it was a big chunk of her job to be walking rounds on the exhibit floor, rotating to a new gallery after lunch. During those days, she could space out for hours at a time when her radio grew quiet and people didn’t ask her where the closest bathroom was. She’d come up with plenty of games to play in her own head, and invented countless stories for each of the paintings and sculptures and tapestries she stared at. 

So that Tuesday had started like any other. She’d braved the early morning commuter train, gotten off at her usual stop on 86th, and walked for a few blocks before arriving at the museum. Most of the day had been a blur; she’d been stationed in the American painters gallery for the first half of her shift, the most noteworthy thing to happen being a teenager smuggling in a bag of chips to one of the galleries. Lunch had been spent scrolling through her phone while she half-heartedly ate, and she started the second half of her shift in the Greco-Roman statue gallery planning what workouts she’d do that night.

Some time around 2:00, she noticed someone sit down at one of the benches almost directly across from her. She didn’t pay her much mind at first; there seemed to be nothing remarkable about another art student camped out to practice sketching. The statue gallery was usually full of them. But the more time went on, the more she started to stick out as the late afternoon visitors filtered out. This was one of Adora’s favorite times of the day, an hour before twilight when the sky was painted golden and the galleries were quiet. Sometimes it was dead enough that she could leave her station and stretch her legs by doing laps around the room. Today could very well have been one of those days, but this new person to watch kept her standing in the same place.

The girl was seated on a bench in the middle of the room, her face in profile as she studied the white marble in front of her. Her subject was a life-sized statue of an Amazon; the stone warrior rested one arm above her head and propped the other on a short column. Adora remembered the time she’d overheard a tour guide point out that the stone figure had supposedly been wounded in battle. As the guide passed, they’d told the guests to look at the delicate drops of blood that ran from the wound in her torso. The next chance she got, Adora had observed it up close. Sure enough, the level of detail was striking. Adora wondered if the girl on the bench had noticed it yet.

The longer she worked, the more the girl’s movements became increasingly fine tuned. Her eyes flicked from the statue to her sketchbook more frequently, and she squinted as she erased and re-did certain parts. She hunched over her work with an occasional shift to tuck one leg under the other, sometimes pausing to flick her short, choppy brown hair out of her face.

Adora tried her best not to stare. She really did. There were so few people moving through the galleries now, though, that she had a hard time looking anywhere else. At this point, she’d studied every statue in view so thoroughly that she could picture them in perfect detail. Having someone new right in front of her was incredibly hard to ignore.

Plus, there was something fascinating about the way she worked. It wasn’t just that Adora was bored today. She’d seen plenty of art students working in the galleries, but none of them captured her attention quite like this one did. She couldn’t place a finger on it; was it the way she sketched? Adora wasn’t a very good artist herself, so she supposed she wouldn’t know. Her friends would probably tease her and say that it was because Adora found her attractive-- and to be fair, that wasn’t exactly wrong-- but that wasn’t what caught her eye. She couldn’t explain it. It just felt like she was drawn to her somehow, as if the girl stood at the center of a magnetic field that had sucked her in.

As fate would have it, her radio chose this precise moment to go off, and the girl’s head turned in her direction before Adora was prepared for it. They made a split second of eye contact, and Adora couldn’t help but notice how striking her eyes were: one golden amber and one cerulean blue. Embarrassed that she’d been caught staring, she fumbled with her radio and held down the button to respond.

“Go ahead,” she muttered miserably into it, turning her body half away from the girl who was now very aware of her presence.

“30 minutes to closing, don’t forget to do your final sweep of the galleries at 10 of. Over,” the fuzzy voice on the other end of the radio droned. It was just their routine end-of-day check in, but it had startled her more than usual. She checked her watch. Sure enough, it read 4:30. She must not have been paying attention, because more time had passed than she’d realized.

“10-4,” she sighed in confirmation, releasing the button on the side with a click.

When she turned back, the girl was hurriedly packing up her sketchbook and pencils. Adora knew she was probably leaving because the museum was closing soon, but she still had the sinking feeling it was because of her. She felt like an asshole for staring and even worse for allowing herself to be caught doing it.

Just like that, the girl briskly walked out, and the gallery suddenly felt very empty.

The next 20 minutes felt incredibly long by comparison. Adora found herself checking her watch every few minutes, which didn’t help. By the time she was ready to do her rounds of the gallery 10 minutes before close, she was immensely grateful for a chance to stretch her legs.

Today she didn’t have to shoo anyone out of the galleries; it was quiet and her every step seemed to reverberate off the walls. As she re-entered the room where she’d been stationed all day, she radioed back to confirm that the sweep was clear. Just after clicking off her radio, though, she noticed something out of place on the bench in the middle of the room.

Moving closer, she realized it was a piece of paper wedged between the slats of the seat. She sighed, assuming that it was probably another museum map that someone didn’t want to hold on to long enough to find a trash can. Some of the museum guests seemed to treat the gallery like their own home, leaving behind whatever wrappers and bottles and papers they didn’t want anymore. Adora always tried to pick up things when she could. The janitorial staff often said hello to her on her way out, and she tried to make the evening rounds a little easier for them if possible. But as she went to pick it up, she noticed that the folds were much neater and less hurried than the creases in eschewed maps. And it was certainly too crisp to be from some kid that was shoving things between the slats. 

She pried it out of its space in between the wooden planks and headed over to the closest trash can. Just as her hand hovered over the bin, ready to throw it away, something stopped her. After a moment’s hesitation, she decided to unfold it to see what was inside.

It was a plain piece of white paper, with one uneven edge as if it’d been torn. All it read, in scrawled handwriting, was:

_Made you look ;-)_

For some reason, Adora’s instinct was to look around to see if someone was there. She knew, of course, that no one was, but it didn’t stop her from quickly scanning the gallery. She tried to listen for any movement, but the gallery was perfectly quiet.

She frowned, something compelling her to re-fold and pocket the paper before checking one more time that the gallery was empty.

-

The more time went by, the more the note bugged her. She’d propped it up on top of her dresser, and every once in a while she would stare it down as if it’d give up its secrets.

She’d gone through all the scenarios in her head. Some of the most frequent were: That someone was trying to mess with her (cinematic, but not very likely), that some lovebirds were passing notes, or that it wasn’t meant for her at all.

The last one, she decided, was the most probable. It could have fallen out of someone’s pocket, or some teenager could have wedged it into the bench, or a million other things. The chances of it being meant for her to find were slim to none.

A fleeting thought had crossed her mind that maybe it was from the girl who’d caught her staring. She’d been sitting on one of those benches in the middle of the room, after all. But based on how quickly she’d packed up and left, Adora shrugged it off. So many visitors moved through that area of the museum each day that it could have been anyone. 

Thursday was the next day she worked, but she was stuck in the back office all day monitoring CCTV. It was significantly more boring than usual watching the tiny people pass by on the array of screens.

When she worked again on Saturday, she didn’t see the girl. She wasn’t sure why she expected she would, really. If she’d been on the other side, and had seen a security guard staring at her, she would probably be sure to give that area of the museum a wide berth.

God, she’d been _so_ stupid to stare.

Adora knew it was probably a fruitless effort to check the bench for another note, but she found herself walking there the first break she got.

When she finally made it to the statue gallery, she headed over to her post from the previous day. As she approached the bench, she was quickly disappointed that it was empty. 

She plopped down on the bench with a sigh. _Of course,_ she thought to herself. _I don’t know why I expected it anyways._

But the sound of something hitting the floor made her ears perk up. Peeking under the bench, she noticed a folded up piece of paper and her stomach did a somersault. It must have been wedged far enough into the slats that her sitting down had pushed onto the floor. 

She tried not to let herself get too excited as she picked it up. _It’s probably nothing,_ she repeated in response to her quickened heart rate. 

She turned the paper over in her hands. It was so similar to the previous one that it seemed unlikely to be pure coincidence. The same perfect creases, the same plain paper with a little texture to it, and the one edge that had been neatly torn. 

Adora took a quick steadying breath and unfolded it. It read:

_You’re going to take these and not respond? Don’t be rude, blondie_

Adora sat up ramrod straight, quickly surveying her surroundings like she had last time. A young couple meandered through the gallery to her right, and an older man pondered a statue in the far corner of the room. But there was no indication that anyone there was paying attention to her. 

Still, it felt like _someone_ was watching. 

Adora did her best to shrug off the feeling. She folded the paper back up and tucked it into her pocket. Maybe she _would_ respond this time.

She ended up spending her entire lunch break figuring out what to say. 

Tapping her pen against her chin, she ran through the list of the options in her head: _Sorry, I didn’t know that was for me._ No, that was lame. _I’m going to report you if you don’t come forward._ Too authoritarian, and probably an empty threat since she had no idea who it was anyway. _Stop leaving things for me to clean up._ Not wrong, but also missed the mark somehow.

Did she really want them to stop? Her curiosity had been piqued; she wanted to figure out who it was, and maybe more importantly, why they’d taken enough notice of Adora of all people to leave messages. 

Finally, she settled on one. It wasn’t poetic, and it wasn’t the best response by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly the thing she wanted to know the most. 

_Who are you?_

Satisfied for now, she folded the note in much the same way as the two she’d kept. On the last few minutes of her lunch break, she headed back up to the statue gallery-- thankful there were different coworkers stationed there now as when she’d retrieved the note earlier-- and sat down on the bench.

Adora tried to look as nonchalant as possible when pulling it from her pocket. She rocked back on her hands to hide the motion of the paper sliding into the spaces in the seat. 

She knew it shouldn’t feel so much like a spy mission, and she probably didn’t need to go to such lengths to conceal what she was doing. But it felt like something exciting as she tried to coyly tuck the note in between the slats.

She waited three days for the next response.

All weekend she’d made a point to distract herself enough so it wouldn’t be on her mind so much. She tried to throw herself into her schoolwork, especially in doing source analysis for her research paper. But as soon as she showed up to work on Tuesday, she had to keep from running up to the statue gallery to immediately check the bench.

She lasted until her mid-morning break before the suspense was too much. Sure enough, there was another note patiently waiting for her when she sat down.

_Telling you would ruin the fun, wouldn’t it? It’s your puzzle to solve_

Adora should have guessed that someone leaving mysterious notes wouldn’t reveal their identity so quickly. But it had been worth a try. So she wrote back:

_Why are you doing this?_

Another two days later, their response was:

_You looked bored, figured I’d give you something to do. You’re welcome_

Adora had frowned when she’d picked that one up. She wasn’t bored, she was contemplative. Most of the time. 

She made an indignant face as if the person was there to see. At this point, it really did start to feel like they were having a conversation, even if it was spaced out every few days. Adora had come prepared this time and brought her pen and paper with her. Sitting hunched over on the bench, she scrawled out quickly:

 _I’m not bored. But I_ _will_ _figure it out._

Of course, she should have expected the next note would be dripping in sarcasm. Almost every note prior had been, after all.

_Watch out, detective Adora on the loose! Don’t know why else you’d respond, but ok_

Adora hadn’t responded directly to that one. She’d been scheduled to patrol the statue gallery again soon after, and as the day approached she felt herself nearly vibrating with excitement. This was the first time she’d been stationed in the statue gallery since the first note, and she’d been itching to try to stake it out. All morning she kept a keen watch for anyone who looked like they could be leaving a note. But to her disappointment, the museum guests were perfectly normal that day.

Still, though, something made her check before she clocked out. And sure enough, there was a note. It just hadn’t been there before lunch.

_Hey Adora ;) have you figured it out yet?_

So she surmised that the person wouldn’t leave notes when she was there. They’d made it clear this was a puzzle, and they weren’t going to solve it for her by leaving notes right in front of her.

Adora quickly scribbled her reply: 

_I will soon. Also, how do you know my name?_

It quickly became a habit to check the bench at least once per shift. Every time she worked, she’d find different excuses to quickly jog up to the statue gallery during her break, or her lunch, or on her way to clock out. The notes were so brief that she was always anticipating the next one as soon as she finished reading. She wrote out her next notes in her head during boring shifts, trying to craft the perfect response. She always had a pen and piece of paper in her uniform pocket now. Just in case. She’d even started to bring a notebook to work.

The next note was the first time it’d ever gone onto a second line.

_It’s on your nametag, duh_

_C’mon, detective! Unless you’re not smart enough to crack the code?_

_That_ one got to her. This note had done something different, had stoked the embers of her competitive side. They wanted a game? Fine. That’s what they’d get.

Because Adora finally had a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If anyone’s interested in the statue that Catra was sketching, I based it off the one linked here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/253373?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&when=A.D.+1-500&ft=statue&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=3  
> I’m basing the museum building/location off the Met in NYC, but a lot of the art will be from a composite of different museums I’ve been to. If people are interested I can post links to what they’re like for more context :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not too much of our mystery girl in this one, but just wait til the end when Adora makes a move! I like the idea of Lonnie being Adora's wingman and I hope you do too :')

To execute her plan, Adora needed some help. No matter which way she’d planned it, she knew she couldn’t stake out the gallery herself; whoever had been writing the notes had made it clear they weren’t going to make it that easy. She had to be strategic. 

So, she’d have to get one of her coworkers in on her plan. 

“Hey, Lonnie,” Adora said, leaning into the office as casually as she could muster.

“Oh hey, Adora,” Lonnie replied, looking up from whatever paperwork she’d been filling out. “What’s up?”

“You’re working statues Thursday afternoon, right?”

“Yeah.” Lonnie leaned back in her chair. “Why?”

“I was wondering if you could keep an eye out for someone for me.”

At that, Lonnie immediately perked up. “For who?”

“That’s the thing. I'm trying to figure that out,” Adora said as she slumped a little bit against the doorframe. “Stuff keeps getting left in the same spot, and I want to figure out who’s doing it.” 

“Hmm.” Lonnie pondered as she leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, I can keep an eye out. What part of the gallery is it?”

“West 6, right in the center of the room on one of the benches.” Adora replied. 

“And what are they leaving?”

 _Shit._ “Uh, just some papers. Folded up.” Adora should have been prepared for that question, but somehow hadn’t expected it. “But if you see them leave anything, can you keep it? It’s part of my, uh, investigation,” she quickly added.

Lonnie eyed her over carefully. “Sure,” she said after a second. “I can do that.”

“Thanks!” Adora said brightly, trying to change the topic as quickly as possible. “Uh, okay then, I’ll see you Thursday!” 

She was already halfway out the door by the time Lonnie could even respond.

Adora went into Thursday’s shift with a bit more of a spring in her step than normal. She was hopeful that today might finally be the day she’d crack the code. Unfortunately, she couldn’t talk to Lonnie until the end of the day. And she didn’t even know if the mystery note writer would be there, really, so she knew she shouldn’t get her hopes up. The eight hours seemed to stretch on much longer than normal.

But to her relief, Lonnie didn’t come back empty handed.

At the end of the day, Adora dawdled in the office waiting for Lonnie to get back. She’d already killed time by packing up, returning her uniform jacket to her desk, and re-racking her radio at the charging station. Luckily, just as she was about to give up and go home, Lonnie walked into the office. 

“Oh, hey,” Adora said as nonchalantly as possible, trying to make it look like she’d been packing her bag.

“Hey,” Lonnie nodded. A moment went by before she noticed Adora looking at her expectantly.

“Oh, right! Yeah, I got your girl.” Lonnie brushed past her to hang up her own radio.

“Girl?” Adora asked, trying to keep her expectations in check. _Just because she said girl doesn’t mean_ that _girl._

“Yeah, your girl. The one who’s been leaving things over in West 6?”

“Oh. Right. That girl.” Adora gulped, sitting down on the edge of her desk. _The chances are so low. Could it really be her? And if it is, what does she want from me?_ “So, uh, did she leave anything today?”

“Yeah. Here you go,” Lonnie tossed something to her that Adora barely managed to catch. She inspected it quickly; it looked the same as every other note that had been left so far. The folds looked as crisp as ever, as if it was still waiting to be opened.

“Thanks,” Adora replied as she carefully tucked it into her bag. “So, um, what did she look like? I’ve been trying to figure out who it was, but not much luck.”

Lonnie’s eyes trailed off to the side as if she was imagining her. “About this tall, short brown hair? Oh, and she had two different colored eyes.”

“Two different colored eyes?” Adora asked incredulously. “Do you remember what colors?”

“Yeah,” Lonnie shrugged. “One blue and one almost like, gold? Hard to describe. But she was pretty hard to miss.”

“Hmm,” Adora nodded with feigned indifference, trying not to let her excitement show. 

It _had_ to be the same girl she’d seen sketching that day. Why would a girl like that want to mess with a security guard? Maybe she was trying to get back at her for staring, or something. But their recent conversations had felt more playful than anything, and she’d never appeared outright hostile in her notes. So what _did_ she want with Adora, then?

The more she thought about it, the more the note seemed to taunt her from her bag.

“Do you know her?” Lonnie questioned when Adora didn’t elaborate. 

“No,” Adora said quickly-- maybe too quickly, she thought-- “I mean, I saw her once in that same spot a while back. Didn’t think she’d be the one doing this, though. I’ll have to keep an eye out next time.”

“You’re not gonna open it?” Lonnie jerked her chin over towards where Adora had tucked the note into her bag.

“Oh, that?” Adora pointed to her bag. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I mean, you know.” 

“Mmhmm,” Lonnie said, one eyebrow quirking up as she crossed her arms.

“Well thanks for keeping watch for me,” Adora said, suddenly very invested in changing the subject. “I owe you.”

Lonnie waved dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. It was no problem.”

“Well, I’ll see you Saturday then?” Adora asked as she shouldered her bag.

“Yeah, see you then.”

Adora hurried out of the office, fingers toying nervously with the straps on her bag as she walked. She barely made it out of the building before reading the note.

 _Hurry up, princess,_ it read. _I’m getting bored._

Adora’s jaw set at the nickname (if she could call it that-- it was probably meant more as an insult, really). She knew she had to act soon. If she didn’t, there was a chance that the mystery girl would get bored enough that she’d stop leaving notes. Or she also ran the risk of the girl stopping showing up entirely. 

That couldn’t happen. Now that she knew who she was, Adora could find some way to prove she’d solved her puzzle. This mystery letter writing had kept her on her toes the past couple of weeks. The thought of never seeing her again made her future shifts sound bleak by comparison.

She needed to know more about the mystery girl (and she needed to apologize for staring in the first place). She just had to figure out how.

-

“Hey, Adora,” Lonnie said as she was packing up at the end of her lunch on Saturday. There was something different in the tone of her voice; it reminded her of the time that Lonnie had been particularly proud of a prank she’d pulled on their coworker Rogelio. Adora looked over her shoulder as she dropped her lunchbag on her desk.

“Hey,” she replied, cocking her head to the side a bit. “Everything good?”

“Yup,” Lonnie smiled knowingly. She leaned back in her chair, eyes tracking Adora closely. Adora felt like she was being sized up, and it made something twist in her stomach.

“Uh, okay,” Adora tried to keep her voice even, not really sure what else to say. She stuffed her empty lunchbag into her backpack as Lonnie watched.

“I was monitoring CCTV this morning,” Lonnie commented. It sounded like there should be more to the statement, but if there was, Lonnie didn’t offer it willingly.

“Yeah? Anything interesting happen?” Adora tried, hoping it’d alleviate whatever weird direction this was going in.

“Mmhmm.” Lonnie raised a brow at her. “I saw you leaving a note up in statues.”

Adora froze. She suddenly connected that Lonnie had been monitoring the cameras at the same time she’d left her note for the girl today. Fuck.

“You-- what do you--” she sputtered, unsure of where she was going with her words.

“Relax,” Lonnie said with a wink. “I won’t tell on you or anything. I’m hoping your girl gets it.”

Adora laughed, but it felt defensive and forced. “Oh, that’s not-- she’s not my--”

“C’mon, Adora,” Lonnie waved her off. “You ask me to keep an eye out for a cute girl, who’s leaving you what I can only assume are love letters. I’m not stupid, you know.”

Adora felt her entire face grow warm. “It’s not like that,” she said, finally managing to complete a sentence. 

“Mmhmm,” Lonnie teased. “And that’s why you wouldn’t read it in front of me, right?”

If it was possible, she felt herself grow even more embarrassed.

“That was because-- well-- okay,” she sighed, finally giving up. She slumped into her desk chair. “Yes, we’ve been exchanging notes. But it’s not _love letters_ or anything--” she paused to shiver-- “It’s kind of a long story."

Lonnie looked pleased. She checked her watch. “We’ve got five minutes of lunch left. Give me the quick version.”

Well, she didn’t have much of a choice, did she?

“Okay, so, a few weeks ago I noticed these pieces of paper that were getting left in one of the benches in West 6. I started checking for them and when I realized they were notes, I started reading them out of habit. The more I did, the more I realized they were directed at me.” She felt a shiver recalling that eerie feeling of being watched. “But I didn’t know who it was. I got curious, so I wrote back a couple of times and they-- well, she, I guess-- responded. I wanted to figure out who was doing it and why, but she only left notes when I wasn’t there.”

Lonnie nodded. “So that’s where I came in.”

“Yeah,” Adora smoothed a hand over her hair. “But now, even though I know who she is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to her. Like I can’t just say, ‘hey, you’ve been leaving me these letters, who are you and why are you doing it?’”

“Hmm.” Lonnie leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms again. She started nodding slowly. “Alright, Adora. I’ll help you get your girl.”

Adora pushed past the instinct to correct the way she said _her girl_. She hadn’t figured out how to approach her yet, so she figured she should stay open to suggestions. “How?”

“Oh, I have some ideas,” Lonnie grinned.

-

On Tuesday, Adora came ready to enact their plan. In the morning, Adora and Lonnie were both assigned to work statues together: Lonnie in the south corner of the West 6 gallery with the note-writing bench, and Adora one room over.

“In position,” Adora spoke into her radio when she reached her station.

“10-4,” Lonnie’s voice crackled on the other line. “The decoy’s in place. Now we just wait.”

Adora nodded. The decoy in question was a blank note, folded from the same paper as Adora’s other ones, that they’d neatly tucked into the bench earlier. If the mystery girl showed, they were confident that she’d check the bench for a note. Then all Adora had to do was go up to her. Of course, she’d made a plan for that part, too.

They waited long enough that Adora’s initial excitement wore off, then she’d gotten bored, and then started to worry that maybe the girl wouldn’t show up at all. After two long hours, Lonnie’s voice came to life over her radio.

“Go ahead,” Adora confirmed, releasing the button as the nervous feeling in her stomach began to mount again.

“I’ve got eyes,” Lonnie replied. “6 o’clock, heading north.”

“10-4,” Adora confirmed. She shifted a bit to one side so that the bench was in her line of sight. Sure enough, after a few long seconds, the girl came into view.

She was wearing mostly black today, much like the other art students who came to sketch in the galleries. The heat was cranked up in the galleries today, but she still wore her overcoat and scarf, making her stick out from the other museum patrons who’d already peeled off their outer layers. By the looks of it, Adora wondered if she’d made a bee line for the statue gallery as soon as she entered. It was probably a long shot, but the idea made her smile.

The girl slowed down, taking some time to drift between statues before settling on a marble bust of a young man. She rummaged around in a bag on her shoulder, eventually pulling out a sketchbook and pencil and beginning to draw.

Several minutes passed, and she was no closer to the bench. Adora watched her shift her weight from one hip to the other as she sketched. She started to falter, her mind running wild: Did they have the wrong person? Was Lonnie really just messing with her after all? Did she have a doppelganger or something? The most recent note remained tucked carefully in her pocket. She toyed nervously with the paper, hoping it’d help calm her down.

Just as the creeping self-doubt began to set in, she noticed movement. The girl meandered slowly, taking her time to study each statue with her sketchbook tucked close to her chest. As she turned, Adora even got a half-second glimpse of her face, which was set in a critical frown. She barely noticed Lonnie’s quiet “ _On the move”_ crackling over the radio.

After an agonizingly slow loop around the gallery-- punctuated with a few short pauses to sketch one or two statues-- the girl began to get closer and closer to the center of the room. Then, as fate would have it, Adora watched as she casually approached the bench and sat down.

 _Bingo_. Adora’s heart pounded; it was now or never.

Somehow, she forced herself to start moving in the direction of the bench. It felt like she was walking in the type of slow motion you’d find in a dream, propelled by courage she didn’t know she had. She tried to tread lightly; she feared that if her footfalls rang too loud, the girl would disappear in a wisp of smoke.

The walk to the bench was both torturously long and much too short. Adora found herself standing a pace behind the bench as mounting anticipation twisted her stomach into knots. She took a shaky breath, carefully withdrawing the paper from her pocket.

Adora cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, and the girl quickly snapped her sketchbook shut.

“Yeah?” she replied as she turned. It was the first time Adora had gotten a good look at her up close. Her warm brown skin was dusted with freckles, her short choppy hair perfectly tousled. And of course, her eyes were just as striking as last time. Adora couldn’t forget them if she tried. (She had tried, in fact. Her efforts so far had proven wildly unsuccessful.)

The girl’s face didn’t seem to show any hints of recognition. Adora’s heart quickened, anxiety gnawing at her ribcage. She prayed that she had the right person, or else this was going to be incredibly embarrassing. It had to be her, right? Lonnie wouldn’t be messing with her. There were too many coincidences. It _had_ to be her.

She took a quick inhale to steady herself. “I think this is yours,” Adora replied, opening her hand to reveal the folded note in her palm. 

The girl extended a hand and Adora dropped the paper into it. After a moment of consideration, she looked from the note back up to Adora. 

Slowly, a sly smile crept onto her face. 

“My mistake,” she said, but her voice and expression showed it clearly wasn’t. “I must have dropped that.” 

So Adora had gotten it right, then. This was the girl that kept leaving her mysterious notes. The initial wave of satisfaction was quickly superseded by panic when Adora realized she didn’t know what to say. This was not part of the plan. 

The girl continued to make unwavering eye contact. Something about it was intense, as if bearing the full weight of her gaze made the words freeze in Adora’s throat. Her eyes shifted away slightly, tracing over some part of her face. 

“Uh, yeah,” was all Adora said after a moment of stunned silence. 

“Well, thanks,” the girl replied, standing up and turning on her heel as if to leave. This was happening so much quicker than Adora had expected. The past few minutes of slow motion seemed to be catching up all at once.

“Wait--” Adora added quickly. It was a gut reaction; she still had no idea what she was going to say. The girl half turned back, eyebrows raised, but didn’t say anything.

“Um,” Adora started. “Will I see you again?” 

She wanted to smack herself in the face. _Real smooth,_ she thought.

The girl shot her a bemused look. “I’m around,” she shrugged.

Adora barely caught the smile that slipped onto her face as she turned away.

-

Adora went back and checked the bench at the end of the day, just in case the girl had left a note. And sure enough, she had. 

This note was the longest one yet. It was two simple lines, four complete phrases, but it was more than she’d ever written before.

 _You finally figured it out,_ it read. _Good work, detective._

And then the line that threw Adora for a loop: 

_You asked if you’d see me again. Do you want to?_

Adora didn’t know. Or at least she didn’t think she did.

The next time she worked, she spent all day pondering her answer.

On the one hand, it was annoying that the girl had essentially used the notes to play games with her. She still didn’t know anything about her; Nothing, that was, other than she was probably an art student, she was incredibly sarcastic, sketched a lot, and had a propensity for leaving cryptic notes. She’d clearly observed Adora enough to direct notes at her, and that was kind of weird, right? Adora had no idea why she’d taken notice of her in the first place. And of course, even after weeks of their exchange, she still didn’t know her name.

On the other hand, something about her made Adora want to know more. And she _had_ been entertained by the mystery of it all. There were so many things she wanted to ask her. The idea of it being over, of not seeing her again after having their secret conversations, made her feel weirdly disappointed. 

So eventually, she responded with one simple word:

_Yes_

She had to wait an entire weekend before she got her answer. The first thing she did when she worked next was check the statue gallery. If this kept up much longer, she figured she’d need some sort of excuse about why she went there so often. Her other coworkers must have noticed by now.

This time, the note was wedged far enough into the slats that she had to really work to get it out. The suspense while she tried to retrieve it couldn’t be good for her nerves. She took a deep breath before reading it. It said:

_Then you will._

_-C_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the comments, kudos, and bookmarks! Hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for the next chapter. There's plenty more witty banter to come ❤️


	3. Chapter 3

During her next few shifts, Adora was constantly brimming with nervous energy. The girl said she _would_ see her again, but she hadn’t said when or where. She found herself more on alert than usual through her shifts in case she showed up. Although she’d religiously checked the bench for notes, the mystery girl left no clue about her plans.

She still knew next to nothing about her. But now, at least, she had one thing to go off of: the letter C that she’d used to sign the last note. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, right?

To keep herself occupied, she tried to imagine what she’d say to her next. She wasn’t sure what they’d talk about, really, but Adora had quite a few questions burning in the back of her mind. _Who are you? Why are you always here? Why did you start writing me notes? And why me?_

It had taken three full shifts-- enough time for Adora to begin worrying that maybe she wouldn’t show-- before the mystery girl finally made another appearance.

It had been sometime around noon when she’d walked in; She’d sauntered so casually into the gallery that Adora had nearly missed her. After a minute, though, she’d registered her head of short, tousled hair and the lazy grace in the way she walked. She was on the opposite end of the room from Adora, taking slow steps that echoed through the room. Adora’s eyes trained on her back, tracking her movements while she took her time admiring the paintings. She was only vaguely aware of the other museum patrons-- when a woman approached her for directions to another gallery, she’d nearly jumped in surprise.

The girl’s path along the perimeter of the room was slow-- excruciatingly so. After what seemed like an eternity, she turned to face the wall that Adora stood against. Adora could feel the nervous energy mounting as she inched closer, so slowly that she wondered if she was intentionally trying to drag this out. She grappled internally as she tried to figure out the right time to say something. When she was ten feet away? Five?

Adora wondered if she’d acknowledge her at all; she pictured the girl gliding right past her, eyes moving on to the next painting without meeting hers. The image made something twist in her stomach. 

Despite her best efforts, Adora had a hard time keeping her eyes off her. It was two paintings away when something finally caught her attention. Her eyes flicked over to Adora; after a half second of eye contact, she unceremoniously sat down on the nearest bench facing her. She made no move to speak, but it seemed as much of an invitation as Adora would get.

 _Say something!,_ her inner voice urged her.

“Hi,” she finally said a few seconds later. Her voice felt like it was detached from her own body.

The girl looked up from where she’d been rifling through her bag. “Hi,” she parroted, emotion on her face unreadable, with a voice lower and steadier than hers. She continued her search, finally pulling out a sketchbook and pencil case that she set on the bench beside her.

Adora tried not to appear dumbfounded. After all this time waiting, the girl was here in front of her, but she couldn’t figure out what to say. In that moment, her mind went blank. All the questions and conversations she’d meticulously planned went right out the window.

The girl only flicked through her sketchbook in response to Adora’s silence. She retrieved a pencil and began to make a few fluid marks on the page.

Before Adora had figured out something to say, the girl beat her to it. “So,” she drawled, eyes not leaving the page, “Are you going to talk to me, or just stare at me?”

Adora felt like an idiot. 

“Uh,” she panicked, quickly settling on the first thing she thought of, “What are you drawing?”

This caused the girl to come to a full stop, finally looking up at Adora. “Seriously?”

Adora instantly wondered if she’d done something wrong. “Huh?” she replied rather ungracefully.

She squinted back at her, shaking her head after a moment. “You had all this time, and _that’s_ what you came up with, detective?”

She felt like even more of an idiot now. 

“You said you wanted to see me again,” the girl went on when Adora didn’t respond. She looked back down to erase some part of her drawing; Adora found herself wishing she could see what it was. “Talking to me is a whole other ball game.”

She wasn’t wrong; talking to her was not something she’d been prepared for. Plus, conversation itself was an art Adora felt she’d never mastered. “It’s nice, though,” she replied quickly. “Having someone to talk to.” The girl just snorted.

“I don’t usually talk to many people when I’m working,” she continued. “So it’s easy to get bored.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “We can’t have you getting bored, now can we? Then you’ll miss catching an art thief, or whatever it is you guys do.”

Adora scoffed. “You try standing in the same spot for 4 hours. You’d be bored too.”

She paused again to throw her an incredulous look. “With all this art around me? No way.”

People often thought she got paid to stare at art all day; Adora hoped this girl wasn’t one of them. “Believe me, after doing the same rotations enough times, you tend to stop noticing it.”

“Then you’re not looking through the right eyes,” the girl replied, her tone challenging. 

Adora looked at her for a second, trying to figure her out. Although her position on the bench made her look smaller, her presence was anything but.

“Okay.” Adora said after a moment. The girl’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “I’m not an art student. Show me through the right eyes, then.”

The girl’s look of confusion quickly changed. She smiled faintly, eyes narrowed as if evaluating her. “Alright, detective. When’s your next break?”

Adora checked her watch. “At 2:00.”

“Well,” The girl responded, tucking her pencil into her sketchbook as she folded it closed. “See you then.”

\--

The time between then and her break stretched out like an eternity. The girl had left quickly, slinging her bag over her shoulder without bothering to put away her sketchbook. All she’d added was to meet her at the European paintings gallery at 2:00. She found herself checking her watch every few minutes in the hopes that it would be later than it was. As it inched closer to 2:00, the bundle of nerves in her stomach seemed to only grow. 

The moment the clock struck 2:00, she walked briskly, not wanting to waste any time. It only took her two minutes to exit her post in the American painters gallery, plod up the staircase, and emerge onto the upper level. She took a right turn at the landing, nearly completely ignoring the view which, under normal circumstances, would make her linger. The center of the floor was open, with one of the best views of the first floor entrance hall below. Marble balustrades lined the walkways, drawing the eye up to the sweeping archways that connected to the ceiling. A massive skylight allowed the mid-afternoon light to filter in. People mingled around the perimeter of the floor, choosing which galleries to enter next. Adora only spared the stunning architecture a fleeting glance; its beauty was overridden by the knot in her stomach. She had more important things to attend to today.

As she rounded the corner, Adora saw her: the girl’s elbows were resting on the railing, hands clasped loosely as she watched something on the first floor. Her black jacket seemed in stark contrast to the white marble of the balustrade.

She straightened up when Adora moved into view, turning to face the gallery entrance. She cast a sideways glance at Adora.

“How long do you have?” She asked as Adora approached.

“Fifteen minutes,” Adora replied, trying not to let the very slight pant show through in her breathing. 

The girl just nodded, setting off towards the gallery entrance without warning. Adora followed close behind.

Together they navigated through the maze of the gallery, past a series of pastoral landscapes nearly as tall as Adora. The girl wasn’t distracted, though; she was clearly on a mission, and kept a brisk pace that Adora had to consciously keep up with.

After exiting the third room and hanging a left, she finally slowed down and came to a stop. They stood in front of a painting with a curved top edge, framed in an unassuming light wood.

Adora stepped a bit closer to study it. The central figure was a young woman, who seemed to float in a shallow stream. Her face and hands just breached the water. Around her on the riverbank, incredibly lifelike plants bloomed. Flowers floated in the water surrounding her billowing dress and reddish hair.

While she didn’t feel particularly qualified to appreciate art, she could tell that the artist must have been very skilled. There was no doubt that the details were beautiful. From the side, she could feel the girl’s eyes watching her closely. 

“So,” Adora finally said, breaking the silence. “What am I missing?”

The girl turned her attention to the painting for what felt like the first time. “Have you read Shakespeare?”

“Uh, some in high school,” She admitted. “But not very well. Why?”

The girl nodded, only sparing her a quick glance before re-focusing on the painting. “It’s a scene from Hamlet,” she started, eyes tracing over it carefully. “Long story short, her boyfriend kills her dad, and she slowly goes insane. This is the scene where she drowns in the river.”

Adora frowned as she turned back to it. It had looked serene on first glance, but knowing the context gave the painting more depth. 

“Okay, well that’s... dark.”

The girl snorted a bit. “Yeah. So, what did you notice about it at first?”

Adora squinted at it again. “Um, lots of green. And she looks really realistic. The water does, too.”

“Okay. What about the flowers?”

“Uh,” Adora started, trying to find something intelligent to say about them. She came up empty. “They’re nice?”

That got the girl to chuckle, a melodic sound she hadn’t been expecting. 

“Have you ever heard of floriography?”

“Flory-what?”

“Floriography,” she repeated. One look at the blank expression on Adora’s face and she went on. “It’s basically the meanings behind flowers.”

“Oh,” Adora replied, feeling a little embarrassed about how obvious that should have been. “No, I haven’t.”

“The artist chose each of these flowers for its meaning,” she explained, turning her gaze back to the painting. “They think the roses are for her brother’s nickname for her-- the ‘rose of May.’”

“Oh, that’s neat,” Adora said, looking at one of the roses floating by her cheek in more detail. 

“Then there’s willow for forsaken love, nettle for the pain she felt, and daisies for her innocence,” the girl went on, pointing to each flower she named. “The violets around her neck symbolize the death of the young, since she was only a teenager. And the poppies are for death, too.” Adora’s eyes followed where she pointed, to the orange blooms floating around her head.

“Well, it’s pretty interesting,” Adora admitted. “Even if it’s dark.”

“So you still think you could get bored of this?” she asked incredulously, crossing her arms over her chest. “There’s so much in every piece that you’d never even know.”

“That’s true,” she said after a moment of consideration. “In my defense, I’ve listened to the tour guides’ stories. I know a lot about, like, three or four pieces. But I’ve never known how to appreciate art.”

“Art’s not this big mystery that people think it is,” the girl shrugged. “Sometimes you just have to look closer.”

“Makes sense,” Adora nodded, letting her eyes trace back over the painting one more time. She checked her watch; it was five minutes until her break was over. “Are you sticking around later?” she asked hopefully.

“Not today. I have class to get to in a bit,” the girl replied, the emotion on her face unreadable. 

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later then?” Adora questioned. She tried not to get her hopes up too much.

“Yeah,” she said after a moment’s pause. It sounded non-committal enough that Adora worried she wouldn’t. And she still had no way to contact her-- if she never showed up again, Adora would be none the wiser.

“I still don’t know your name,” Adora added tentatively, hoping she’d bite.

The girl tilted her head to the side a bit. “It’s Catra,” she said simply.

Adora nodded, half in disbelief that after all this time, she actually knew her name. All she’d had to do was ask. “Well, I’ll see you later, then, Catra.”

A bemused look came onto her face. “See you later, _Adora_.”

Adora turned, a triumphant smile spreading across her face as she did. She bit down on her bottom lip, fighting the urge to look back as she exited the gallery. The rest of her shift went by much more quickly that day.

\--

The next time that Catra visited was the following Thursday. Adora had done her best to reassure herself that she must not have scared her off if she’d told her her name. Still, the self-doubt had gnawed at her insides the whole week. When she showed up that afternoon, Adora felt a wave of relief she didn’t know she needed.

“Hi,” Adora remarked as she sat down on the bench across from her. 

“Hey,” she replied, barely looking up as she fished out her sketchbook and pencils from her bag.

“So,” Adora started, “How was your week?”

“Uh, boring.” A few seconds passed before she responded. “You?”

“It was good.” She tried to keep herself from bouncing up and down on her heels. There were so many questions she had for her, and they’d barely had time to talk last time. “You know, busy at the museum, but overall not too bad. Nothing like the holidays.”

“Mmhmm,” Catra said without much affect, eyes not leaving her sketchbook. Every so often she’d look up, raising Adora’s hopes that they were going to talk more, but it was just to look at the painting she stood beside. Adora tried to swallow the dry feeling in her throat.

It grew quiet, and Adora fidgeted with the buttons on her radio. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to talk or not. Why did it feel like whenever she was around Catra, she lost all sense of how to have a regular conversation? Something about her made her feel nervous, but not necessarily in a bad way; More of an excited, I-don’t-want-to-fuck-this-up kind of way.

“Yes?” She asked expectantly after a few minutes, sensing Adora’s gaze.

“It’s just…” Adora said, not sure where to begin. “Well, there’s a lot I’ve wanted to ask you about.”

“Like what?” Catra prompted, eyes flicking between her sketchbook and the painting next to Adora. 

“Uh, a lot of things. Like, where do you go to school?” Not the most interesting question, she knew, but she figured it was a safe place to start.

“Pratt,” she replied, tilting her head to get a better view of something in the painting behind her. “Is that all you have?”

“Do people comment about your eyes a lot?” she asked curiously.

“All the time. Worst pickup lines I’ve ever heard,” she sighed, pausing to erase something on the sketchbook page.

“I can imagine. How often do you come here to sketch?”

“Usually a few times a week. Depends on my assignment.”

“It’s for school, right?” she continued, shifting her weight to her other foot nervously. 

“Yeah.” She didn’t offer anything else.

“Why did you leave me the notes in the first place?” Adora asked, having finally mustered the courage to broach the topic.

Catra set her pencil down, folding her sketchbook closed over top of it. “You really do have a lot of questions, don’t you?”

“Uh,” Adora replied, feeling her ears begin to grow warm in embarrassment. “Yeah?”

“Look, I have to get some stuff done today that’s due soon, so I can’t talk as much as usual.” Before Adora could say anything that’d give away her disappointment, Catra went on. “If you’re not busy after your shift, buy me a coffee and I’ll answer your questions.”

“Oh, sure,” she responded, trying not to let her surprise show through. “I’m done at 5:00, if you’re okay waiting until then?”

She just shrugged. “I was planning to sketch until close, anyway.”

“Okay,” Adora said with a little nod. “I know a good place nearby.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she replied dryly. “Well, I’m going to finish this and then I have to get to some of the other galleries. Meet you in the lobby at 5:00?”

“I’ll be there,” Adora said, making little finger guns at her which earned an eye roll in response. She tried not to get too excited as she let her get back to work.

\--

At the end of her shift, Adora packed her things in a hurry. She was in the middle of taking off her name tag when she heard a familiar voice.

“Hey,” Lonnie acknowledged as she entered the office.

“Oh, hey,” Adora replied quickly. “I didn’t know you were in today.”

“Yeah, I had to cover for Rogelio last minute,” she shrugged, putting her radio back in the charging station. She glanced back at Adora, placing a hand on her hip and narrowing her eyes. “Where are you off to in such a rush?” 

Adora was caught off guard by that. “Just ready to go home, you know. Long day.” That was believable enough, right?

“I’ve worked with you for a year now, not much gets you to move that quickly.” Lonnie stated matter-of-factly. “Unless you’re going to see a certain _cute girl?_ ”

“No,” Adora replied defensively, but her voice was just a little too high to be convincing. “Why would you think that?” 

“Nothing, nothing,” she answered defensively. A knowing smile crept onto Lonnie’s face; Adora knew she didn’t believe her. She just watched as Adora put on her coat and scarf.

“Well, I’ll see you,” Adora said, shouldering her bag as she headed for the door.

“See you,” Lonnie said, the self-satisfied smile still on her face. It wasn’t until she got out of the door that Adora heard her call out, “And have fun on your hot date!”

Adora huffed, feeling her ears grow hot. She tried her best to ignore it and kept walking.

\--

When she reached the lobby, Catra was already waiting for her. She sat with one knee tucked up to her chin, scrolling through something on her phone.

“Hey,” Adora nodded at her as she approached. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” she said, already shouldering her bag and standing up. “So where’s this place you like so much?”

“Right across the street,” Adora replied over her shoulder, already heading for the main entrance doors. Catra followed close behind.

As she exited, the cold air jolted her awake. After hours in the comfortable warmth of the museum, she’d nearly forgotten how biting it was today. She wasn’t looking forward to the long commute home in the cold. 

They made it across the street in a few minutes, the sharp wind making it seem much longer than it was. By the time she was opening the door to the cafe, Adora was grateful that she’d picked somewhere close by. A rush of warm air and the smell of freshly brewed coffee greeted her. Catra wasn’t far behind, her scowl starting to soften now that they were out of the cold.

“What do you want?” Adora asked as she loosened her scarf. 

Catra squinted at the menu. “I’ll do a flat white. I’m gonna go save seats, if that’s okay.”

“Go for it,” Adora responded. It didn’t take her long to order from the chipper barista; one vanilla latte for herself, and one flat white for Catra. She spent the time waiting for their drinks googling what a _flat white_ was so that she didn’t look like a total idiot. This is what she got for not accompanying Bow and Glimmer to all their favorite hipster coffee joints.

When Adora heard her name called, she grabbed their order and scanned the cafe. Catra was perched on one of two deep green armchairs that flanked a small table. From here, she could see her running a hand through her tousled hair. In profile, her amber-colored eye seemed to mirror the last rays of sunset outside.

Adora headed over and placed their drinks down on the wooden table. Even though it was late in the day, the tiny cafe was still crowded, and they’d gotten some of the only seats available. The two armchairs were cozy, nestled into a nook that faced out towards the windows. Across the street, the warm lights glowed in the museum. The passersby all sported different levels of long coats, scarves, and hats, like modern armor to shield themselves from the cold.

Adora sat down on the chair opposite from Catra, taking a long swig of her latte. She gripped the ceramic mug like a vice, trying to get as much surface area as possible to warm up her cold hands.

“So.” Catra started, eyes fixed on Adora’s face. Her gaze was unwavering, made even more intense by the contrast between her eyes. “You ask me one question, I ask you one. Seems fair?”

Adora’s eyebrows scrunched. She should have known there’d be some sort of condition to this. It’s not like the girl who’d left cryptic notes for weeks was going to give away her secrets for free.

“Okay,” Adora nodded. She’d have to consider her questions much more carefully now. “What’s your favorite color?” she said after a moment.

Catra groaned. “You can’t be serious. _This_ is what you bought me coffee to ask.”

Adora laughed. “I wanted to give you something easy to answer first. Go.”

Catra rolled her eyes. “Fine. Red, I guess. Let me guess, yours is pink and sparkly.”

Adora snorted. “What gives you that impression?”

She just shrugged, taking a long swig of coffee. “Preppy hair,” she replied, jerking her chin upwards towards Adora’s hair poof. “So, how long have you been working at the museum?”

“Wait, I didn’t ask a question!”

“Did too,” Catra objected. “Last I checked, ‘what gives you that impression’ was a question. My turn.”

Adora scowled. “Fine,” she muttered. “Go ahead.”

Catra smirked, seeming to savor her victory for a few moments before continuing. “I was asking how long you’ve worked at the museum.”

“A year and a half,” Adora answered. “Did you grow up in the city?” Catra paused, seemingly caught off guard.

“No,” she said hesitantly after a few moments. Adora wasn’t sure why she’d waited to answer. It only took her a moment to recover her normal tone, though. “Did you?” 

“Yeah,” Adora replied, watching her to see any signs of discomfort. It’d only been a momentary change; she seemed back to normal now. “Lower east side. Can I see your sketchbook?”

Her blue and gold eyes narrowed at her suspiciously. “Absolutely not.”

Adora pouted. “Why not?” she asked, and as the words were leaving her mouth, she realized she’d asked another question without meaning to. Shit.

“I don’t like people seeing my unfinished work. That’s why I have a portfolio,” Catra answered. She either hadn’t noticed or cared enough to point out the extra question.

Adora perked up a bit. “Does that mean I can see your portfolio, then?”

Catra squinted at her. “We’ll see about that.” She took another swig of her coffee. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Adora stuck her tongue out at her. “Fine, then. Next question.”

Catra took a moment to consider, gaze cast upward in thought. “Why did you become a security guard at an art museum? Seems a little niche for someone our age.”

Adora shrugged. “I needed a job, and it’s pretty flexible with my class schedule. They were recruiting at my school, and when I graduated, I stayed on.”

“Class schedule?” Catra leaned back in the chair. “I didn’t know you’re in school. How old are you?”

“That’s two questions,” Adora grinned. Catra rolled her eyes. “Me first. How old are _you?”_

Catra leaned forward in her chair a bit, as if interested to see something up close. “Guess.”

Adora looked at her for a moment, trying to figure it out. There weren’t many clues, aside from the band t-shirt that was too generic to tell. “Twenty… two?”

She snorted. “Twenty-five, actually. I’ll take my next question about your age, thanks.”

“Twenty-four,” Adora replied. “Almost the same as you. Where’d you grow up?”

“New Jersey. AKA living hell,” she replied sourly. She seemed eager to change the topic. “What are you in school for, then?”

“I’m doing my Master’s in History,” Adora replied, taking another sip of her drink. She watched Catra pitch an eyebrow. 

“Didn’t take you to be _that_ much of the nerdy type, but good to know,” she smirked.

“What type did you take me to-- wait, no, that’s not my question,” Adora caught herself. Catra just crossed her arms, looking at her expectantly.

Now it was time for the one she’d _really_ been wondering about. “Are you gay?”

Something must have been really funny then, because Catra threw her head back as she laughed. When she recovered, a toothy grin was spread across her face. “What do you think?”

There was no good way to answer that, really. “Yes,” Adora said after a second. Catra’s eyes stayed locked onto Adora’s as if savoring the moment.

“Yes,” She finally confirmed after a long pause. “Are you?”

“Hey, you already asked me a question when you said ‘what do you think,’” Adora reminded her.

“Oh my god, that doesn’t count.” Catra complained as she set her cup down on the table. 

“Does too!”

“Ugh, such a stickler for the rules,” Catra rolled her eyes. “Fine. What’s your next question, detective?” 

“Favorite music genre?”

Catra leaned her chin in her hand. “Okay. Surprised you didn’t ask my favorite artist.”

“Despite working at a museum, I don’t know a lot about art,” Adora shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t know who it is anyway.”

She nodded, apparently satisfied with that response. “I like a lot of music. It depends on my mood. Alright, now back to my last question.”

“Oh, I’m gay too. Very.” _Smooth,_ she chastised herself.

“Okay,” Catra snorted. She picked up her mug from the table to take a swig. “Well what’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen someone do at the museum?”

“Hmm,” Adora pondered, racking her brain for the weirdest guest encounters she’d experienced. “People ask directions to other museums all the time, but once someone asked me for directions to our museum. They’d been there for hours already,” She laughed as she remembered it.

“What did you say?” Catra asked curiously. She leaned forward a little as she curled up in the seat.

“It took me a good five minutes to explain to them they were already there, and every time they said that I didn’t understand. Eventually they just left,” Adora shrugged.

Catra laughed again. It was a sound Adora could see herself getting used to. “People are stupid.”

“Yeah,” Adora chuckled. Seeing Catra’s smile, she decided to take an abrupt turn of conversation.

“Would you want to hang out sometime?” Adora offered. “You know, like actually hang out. When I’m not working.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?” Catra replied, an eyebrow quirking up.

“Well, yeah, but I mean on another day when it’s not so late. What’s your number?” Adora asked, already taking out her phone to enter a new contact. Catra just stared at her. 

“I don't give my number out to girls that easily, you know,” she answered, eyes smoldering as she took a sip of her coffee.

“Not like that-- I didn’t mean-- I meant so we can coordinate,” Adora sputtered. She quickly felt her ears grow hot.

Catra leaned across the table with a sly smile. “That would ruin the fun, wouldn’t it?”

Adora’s mouth hung open, but her words had frozen in her throat. How was she supposed to respond to that, anyway? Her phone screen remained untouched.

Catra was already getting up and grabbing her coat from the back of the chair. “You work Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, right?”

“Yeah,” Adora answered in a daze, not knowing how she knew that. She still held her phone out; the screen had gone dark a while ago.

“Well, then,” Catra said, smirking as she donned her coat and shouldered her bag. “I’ll see you around.” 

“Okay,” was all Adora could say.

“Later, Adora,” Catra called behind her, moving toward the door.

“Later,” Adora said, but she was already gone. 

She was _really_ going to need some practice talking to this girl.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoy getting to see dumb lesbian Adora stumble through conversations with our mystery girl. I really appreciate all your comments, kudos, and bookmarks, they keep me excited and motivated to write this story!
> 
> If anyone's interested in seeing the painting that they look at, here's a link to it: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-ophelia-n01506
> 
> oh, I also updated the chapter count since the original chapter 3 was split into two parts. see you in the next chapter!
> 
> Edit: I had no idea I posted this on the same day as Adora’s birthday??? Happy birthday to our favorite dumb lesbian jock :,)


	4. Chapter 4

Since the first time she’d confronted her at the museum-- not including the weeks of notes they’d left for one another-- this was the fifth or sixth time Adora had seen Catra. While she’d been coming to visit more often, it was never on a very predictable schedule. Adora wasn’t used to this much uncertainty, and frankly, something about it was as thrilling as it was nerve-wracking. After Adora’s embarrassing attempt to get her number, she hadn’t asked her to hang out outside of her work hours. And Catra hadn’t offered any other way to get in contact. She had seemingly made it clear that if she wanted to see her, Adora would have to live with a little bit of mystery. 

She figured she could deal with some mystery for now.

With never knowing exactly when Catra would come around, Adora found herself putting a little more effort into her appearance before work each day, and on more of an alert throughout her shifts. One Thursday morning, in her state of distraction getting ready, she’d rushed out the door completely unaware she’d forgotten her lunch on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t until halfway to the museum that she’d realized, kicking herself for being so absent-minded.

Adora spent the first three hours of her shift trying to keep herself occupied. She started by running the math in her head for lunch options. If she left right when her break started, she could probably make it to the closest deli and back in time to have ten minutes to eat. With that settled, she resumed her normal people-watching and occasionally asking guests to step behind the lines on the floor. The most notable thing that happened that morning was having to tell a ten year old boy that no, he was not allowed to touch the statues (and shooting the parent a pleading look to watch their kid, which she wasn’t convinced had made any impact). Otherwise, the museum patrons seemed particularly disinteresting today. All the faces blended together even more than usual. She blamed Catra for being so much more fascinating than the majority of people she saw.

Her thoughts had just started to shift to Catra, wondering when she would next come by, when she saw a now-familiar mess of brown hair heading her way. Adora felt herself stand up a little straighter, immediately perking up at the idea of talking to her. She tried to pretend that she hadn’t noticed until she got closer.

“Hey,” Catra jerked her chin at her as she sat down on the closest bench.

“Oh, hey. You’re here earlier than normal,” Adora observed as Catra took out her pencils. As soon as the words left her mouth, Adora second guessed herself. She looked forward to Catra coming so much that she’d come to anticipate when she normally showed up. Was that weird?

If it was, Catra didn’t remark on it. She just shrugged. “I had to get a couple hours of work in for my assignment, and this just happened to be the best time. I already went to the American gallery for a bit, actually.”

“Gotcha,” Adora drummed her fingers on the side of the radio clipped onto her belt. “What’s the assignment this time?”

Unlike the first time she’d asked  _ what are you drawing, _ Catra seemed much more willing to answer now. “Studying a ‘place in motion,’” she said, making air quotes around the pencil she held. “I figured people are always walking through here, so might as well give it a try.”

“Oh. Isn’t it hard if people are moving?”

“Kind of, but that’s the point, I guess.” she shrugged. “I don’t know. My professor is really abstract about it, so sometimes it’s hard to tell what they want from us.” She fell quiet, and Adora could see her eyes flicking up and down quickly as she made broad strokes on her paper.

“How late are you staying today?” Adora asked after a minute or two, rocking back on her heels. Was it bad that a part of her hoped she’d stay until she was done her shift? That probably wouldn’t happen given how early she’d come today. But maybe she’d want to get coffee again?

Catra shrugged. “Until 2, maybe? Not sure. I’ll probably get some food on the way home.”

“Crap, I totally forgot about lunch,” Adora sighed, hand running over her hair. It was as if the mention of the meal had reminded her stomach to growl. “I forgot mine at home today, so I have to pick up from somewhere nearby.”

“You want me to get you something?” Catra asked, barely looking up from her sketchbook. “I was going to get lunch anyway, I can just bring it back here instead.”

“Oh no, it’s okay, you don’t have to do that.”

She just shrugged. “I don’t mind. If you go out to get something, you won’t have time to eat it.”

“That’s true.” She had a point; as much as Adora didn’t want to inconvenience her, it would be nice to actually eat on her break, rather than spending the whole time ordering and bringing back food. “Are you sure, though?”

“Yeah. What do you want?”

“Anything, honestly. Whatever’s easiest.” She paused to think. “There’s not a ton around here, but there’s a deli on 79th that makes good bagels.”

“Works for me. What time’s your break today?”

“1:30.” She toyed with the hem of her jacket nervously. “If it’s out of your way, you really don’t have to--”

“Adora,” she said, coming to a full stop on just the one word. Her pencil stopped moving as she paused to look pointedly at her. Somehow just hearing her name on her lips, said with such force, felt like it knocked the wind from her lungs.

“Yeah?”

“It’s fine. I told you, I needed to do it anyway, you’re not inconveniencing me.”

“Okay,” she reluctantly accepted. “Thank you.”

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Catra turned her attention back to her sketching. It was angled just far enough away that Adora couldn’t see her work. The more she came around, the more she hoped she’d get the chance to see it someday. She figured the chances were pretty slim, but she could hope, right?

They passed the next forty-five minutes or so in light conversation, Adora complaining a bit about her term paper and Catra one-upping her with stories about her pretentious classmates. Adora swore she’d never laughed so much during one of her shifts. Catra may not have gotten as animated as she (or Bow, or Glimmer for that matter) did, but her way of telling stories was captivating in its own right. Particularly when describing the ridiculous characters who she had to take classes with. The time slipped by significantly faster when they were talking.

Before she knew it, Catra was checking her phone and packing up her things. “I’m gonna head out to get food soon. Where should I meet you?”

“The museum cafe works,” Adora replied, wishing she didn’t have to go. “Thanks for offering to grab stuff.”

She just nodded, shrugging her coat back on and shouldering her bag. “See you in a bit?”

“Yeah, see you,” Adora replied. Catra turned on her heel and headed out of the gallery, eyes glued to the phone she’d produced from her pocket.

Once she was out of earshot, Adora sighed. She knew the twenty minutes or so would seem like an hour without her.

\--

As soon as her break rolled around, Adora hurried out to the museum cafe in the lobby. A brief look around the small cafe area and she realized Catra was nowhere to be found. She must have still been out braving the cold to get their food. Adora felt a pang of guilt at the thought of inconveniencing her; remembering her earlier words, she tried to push it down. She took off her name badge and sat down at one of the metal tables, pulling out her phone to kill the time.   


“Hey,” a voice said over her a few minutes later, almost making her jump. She looked up to see Catra, who held a steaming coffee cup in either hand and cradled a paper bag precariously in the crook of her elbow. Her cheeks and nose were still flushed red from the cold.

“Oh, hey! Let me help,” Adora offered, taking the coffees out of her hands so she could deposit the bag onto the table. Catra shrugged off her jacket and set it with her backpack on the empty chair beside them.

“Thank you, you’re a lifesaver,” Adora gushed as they both sat down. “I don’t have any cash on me, but I can bring some the next time you’re here.”

“It was a bagel and coffee,” Catra deadpanned, taking out a smaller paper bag and pushing it in her direction. “You don’t have to pay me back.”

“You went out of your way to get it for me, though,” Adora insisted, retrieving the bagel out of the small bag and unwrapping the paper around it. It smelled amazing, and it was still warm. “I’d feel bad.”

“You can just buy me a coffee some other time, or something,” Catra shrugged. “It’s no big deal, promise.”

“Okay, well thank you,” she smiled back. Adora made a mental note to pay her back later as she took a bite. She tried to focus on how good the bagel was, and  _ not _ on how she was getting her hopes up about hanging out again. Catra seemed to mirror her, unwrapping the paper from her bagel.

“You like it?” Adora asked once she’d taken a few bites.

“It’s alright,” she said after a pause to evaluate. “But there’s a place around the corner from me that’s much better.”

Adora chuckled. “Okay, well there’s a better place in my neighborhood, too. But I’ll take what I can get around here.”

Catra half-smiled, and Adora tried not to be dazzled by the warmth in her eyes. She watched as Adora took a sip of the coffee. 

“You like it?” Catra leaned forward on her elbows, parroting Adora’s phrasing and tone.

“Yeah! It’s good,” Adora replied brightly. In reality, the coffee was way too weak for her, but she was just grateful that Catra had been willing to bring her food. She wasn’t going to complain about the coffee being watered down.

“Mmhmm,” Catra hummed, clearly not believing her for a second.

“Okay, normally it’s a little better than this,” she admitted. She took another swig of the coffee in hopes that it’d be stronger the second time around. It wasn’t. “To be fair, the place we went to last time is one of my favorites. It’s not fair to measure generic deli coffee against that.”

“Right,” Catra chuckled. She grabbed a few books out of her bag, stacking them on the seat next to her.

“What are those for?” Adora asked curiously.

“Oh, just some books for class. I was thinking of staying after your break to get some reading done.”

Adora nodded. She tilted her head to the side to get a better view of the titles etched into the books’ spines. “ _ Art Historical Theory and Methodology _ ,” Adora read aloud. “Sounds riveting.”

“Yeah,” Catra grimaced, leaning back in her chair. “It’s a little dense, to say the least.”

“Are all your classes like that?”

“No,” she replied, taking a sip of her coffee. “I like the practicum ones a lot more. But I have to get through the general courses before I get to the fun ones.”

Adora nodded. It reminded her a lot of the required courses she took in the first two years of undergrad. And even some of the classes in the first semester of her Master’s. “Well, I’m sure you can do it. At least it’s not calculus, right?” 

“Ha,” she laughed dryly. “Yeah, fuck calculus.”

They ate in relatively comfortable silence for a few minutes. Relatively, that was, because as much as Adora constantly questioned whether she needed to fill the space with conversation, Catra seemed unbothered. She leaned back in her chair with her legs stretched out in front of her, alternating between sips of coffee and taking bites of her own food. A few times Adora almost said something, but she’d either just taken a bite of food or was flipping through a notebook that she’d placed on the chair next to her.

A notification buzzed on the phone Catra had set down on the table. Adora barely noticed the ping at first. But as Catra glanced down at the screen, suddenly her entire demeanor changed.

“Fuck,” she groaned, smoothing a hand over her hair and putting her coffee down. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“Is everything okay?” Adora replied. She couldn’t help the obvious concern leaking through in her voice.

“Yeah,” she sighed, already beginning to stash things into her bag. “I completely forgot about a meeting with my advisor. If I don’t leave like, right now, there’s no way I’m catching the L in time.”

“Oh, okay,” Adora responded, wishing there was something she could do to help as Catra hurriedly packed her things. She just watched as her wallet and books were shoved haphazardly into the backpack. Adora tried to temper her own sense of disappointment at having to spend the rest of her lunch on her own.

“Sorry I can’t help with all this,” she gestured to the table still filled with their half-finished food and coffees. “I really shouldn’t ditch this meeting, and if I miss the train--”

“Don’t worry about it,” Adora cut in, waving her hand to dismiss her. “I got it, you go do your thing!”

“Okay, thanks,” Catra said, looking apologetic but already getting up. “You working Saturday?”

“I’ll be here,” Adora nodded, throwing in a smile for good measure.

“Cool, well I’ll see you then,” she said, stepping backwards towards the door.

“See you, good luck with your meeting!” she replied with a little wave.

Catra called back a quick thanks before hurrying towards the side exit of the cafe.

Once she was gone, Adora sighed. They hadn’t gotten very long to spend together, and she still had some time left on her break. As she began to pack away the rest of her food and collect their trash, she noticed something that blended into the dark metal of the chair. It took her a second to register, but then it clicked that Catra had forgotten her sketchbook.

Adora picked it up quickly, moving to tuck it into her bag. She didn’t have any way to contact her-- after last time, she’d still been too embarrassed to ask for her number again— so she’d have to keep it for her until Saturday. 

She paused halfway through her motion. With a sketchbook this nice-- it felt like a leather cover-- she probably had some sort of contact information inside, right?

Adora flipped it open to the inner cover. Sure enough, it had a simple tag that read:  _ If lost, return to C. Romero _ .

From the many notes they'd exchanged, Adora could recognize her scrawled handwriting easily; the name was undoubtedly hers. But much to her dismay, the sections of the tag with phone number and email were left blank.

Well, she knew her last name now, but that didn’t get her any closer to returning it.

The fleeting impulse to look at it crossed her mind. A ribbon page marker was tucked neatly into the middle, and it made her want to see its contents even more.

As soon as she ran her fingers over the edge of the pages, though, she froze. Catra had told Adora that she didn’t like people seeing her unfinished work. Looking at someone’s sketchbook was a violation of privacy, right? Adora was determined not to betray her trust like that. She quickly snapped the cover shut, tucking it into her bag in the hopes that it would quell the temptation. 

After coming back from her break, she carefully placed her bag on her desk chair. It made her nervous to leave it alone, even though she knew none of her coworkers would go through her things. She tried her best not to worry about it for the rest of her shift. 

As she should have expected, by the end of the day her bag and its contents were in exactly the same spot as she’d left it. Her nerves were just getting the best of her. She really would feel better once the sketchbook was safely back in Catra’s hands; the amount of responsibility she felt holding onto it was overwhelming. 

And, of course, there was the ever-present urge to look at its pages. She did her best to swat it away, but the temptation always seemed to come back sooner or later. 

She’d nearly left it in her desk drawer at the end of her shift, prepared to come back to it on Saturday morning. At the last minute, she decided that as much as taking it home scared her— god forbid she lose it— she’d be much more anxious if she wasn’t able to check on it. So she carefully placed the sketchbook in her bag and began the long commute home. 

The whole way she was much more careful with her bag than normal. On the subway, she clutched her bag close to her chest, feeling the hard edges of the sketchbook through the fabric to make sure it was still there. She was glad she’d only have to hold onto it for another day and a half; carrying it with her was much more nerve-wracking than she’d expected. 

Somehow, she made it all the way home without incident. The sketchbook had survived her commute of two subway lines, including a transfer at one of the busiest stations in the city, plus walking back to her building. Maybe she  _ could _ do this. 

As soon as she got home, she gave the sketchbook a temporary home on the edge of her desk. The dark leather stood in stark contrast to the muted white wood of the desk and the bright colors she’d used to decorate her room. Its siren call was difficult to ignore. 

Every time she walked into her room on Thursday evening, she couldn’t help but glance at the sketchbook. It seemed to stare back at her, daring her to open it. At one point she sat on her bed, chin in her hand, staring at it as if that would make it give up its secrets. What types of things did Catra draw? Was it just school assignments, or her personal sketches too? It was all right there, tempting her to just take a look. 

After a few hours, she put it carefully in her desk drawer. Maybe if she didn’t have to look at it, she wouldn’t think about it so much.

For the third or fourth time, she felt immensely grateful that she only had to hold onto it until Saturday.

With the sketchbook out of sight, she was able to distract herself for most of Thursday night and Friday. Spending the day with Bow and Glimmer helped push the sketchbook to the back of her mind. Of course, she made no mention of it to them. She didn’t need them prying into Catra’s business.

That night, though, when she was trying to fall asleep, the sketchbook wouldn’t leave her thoughts. She found herself wondering if Catra had figured out where she’d left it, or if she thought she had lost it permanently. A pang of guilt twisted in her stomach. If only there was some way of getting it back to her sooner, or at least letting her know that it was safe. 

Could she be on social media? Before, Adora hadn’t known her last name so there’d been no way to look her up. Now that she had it, though, she could at least try. Adora felt her hopes picking up as she opened one of the apps on her phone. 

She typed in  _ Catra Romero  _ and hit search. A few people came up with similar names, but none of the names or photos matched her. Adora frowned, opening a new app instead. Maybe she was on a different platform.

She gave up after trying 3 or 4 different apps. If Catra did have social media, she certainly wasn’t making it easy for people to find. 

Adora sighed. She’d just have to wait until tomorrow, then. Adora peered out her window, focusing on the sliver of starless sky visible between the buildings. She wondered where Catra was now; she’d never mentioned what part of the city she lived in. What was her view like? Could she see the sky from her apartment, or was it blocked by high rises? What would her apartment look like anyways?

Adora shook her head in an attempt to reset her thoughts. This was dangerous territory, and it was none of her business, really. If Catra wanted to tell her more about her life, she’d do that on her own time. 

The curiosity threatened to gnaw at her from the inside out. She turned over in bed, putting on a podcast and trying to distract herself long enough to fall asleep. 

—

On Saturday, Catra showed up about two hours earlier than Adora expected. It was rare to see her before 2:00; before 12:00, almost unheard of. But today, she appeared at 10:30.

Adora was working in the American painters gallery when she arrived. As soon as she spotted Adora, she seemed to change course to head directly for her. Something about it made a warm feeling bloom amidst the butterflies in her stomach.

“Hey,” Adora greeted her, immediately noticing how tired she looked. 

“Hey,” Catra responded, but she seemed distracted. From the tone of her voice, she must’ve been just as exhausted as she looked.

“I have your sketchbook,” Adora said quickly. She didn’t want Catra to have to worry any longer than she needed to. “You left it here on Thursday.”

“Really? Oh, thank god,” a look of relief washed over her face, a hand pressing from her forehead into her hair. She slumped onto the bench directly across from Adora. “It had an assignment that’s due this week, and I was about to be in  _ major _ shit if I had to re-do it.”

“It’s in our office, but I can grab it on my break,” Adora offered. “I can meet you in the lobby or wherever.”

“Thanks,” Catra replied gratefully. Then, something about her expression quickly shifted. She squinted at Adora. “Wait. You didn’t look at it, did you?”

Adora shook her head. “I just opened to the inside cover, in case it had a way to contact you. But it didn’t have anything. You know, you might want to add an email on there, at least.”

“Okay,” she said, a tinge of wariness still in her voice. “You’re sure you didn’t look at it?”

Adora looked at her quizzically. “I mean, yeah-- you said you don’t like people seeing your unfinished work, so.” She shrugged. “If you want to show me sometime, that’s up to you. But I’m not going to look through your stuff.”

“Okay.” She still looked a little cautious, but her voice sounded less suspicious this time. “Well, thanks for holding onto it. What time’s your break?”

“It’s at 12:00-- Sorry I can’t get it earlier.”

“It’s all good,” she waved her hand vaguely. “I’ll probably head out afterwards, though-- I need to get some stuff done in the studio before it’s due.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Adora tried to temper her disappointment, knowing that Catra had more important things to do than to see her. Still, she had hoped she’d be able to stay.

“It sounds like classes are getting busy?” Adora questioned. As soon as she said it, she realized how lame it sounded. Catra was probably sick of thinking about school stuff anyway. 

“Yeah,” she sighed. “We’ve got a couple of projects coming up soon, and my profs all seem to make them due at the same time, for some reason.”

“My classes always used to do that, too,” Adora snorted. During college, there was always a one or two week period where all her classes made big projects due at the same time. If it didn’t happen twice a semester, it happened at least once. “That sucks. But I’m sure you can do it.”

“Thanks,” she laughed wryly, eyes off to the side. Her expression reminded Adora of how she got when thinking about all the things she had to do. After a moment, she seemed to snap out of it. “What about you, though? Are your classes going okay?”

“Oh, me?” Adora asked out of sheer surprise that she’d remembered. “Um, yeah, they’re alright. I’ve been doing some source analysis for my term paper, which is good, just, you know. A lot of information to sift through.”

“Mmhmm,” Catra mused, leaning forward with her chin on her hand. She hadn’t taken any sketchbooks or art supplies out since she sat down. Adora had assumed she’d have a backup sketchbook or something-- unless maybe she just wanted to talk?

“What’s the term paper about?” Catra asked when Adora didn’t respond. Was she genuinely interested in Adora’s schoolwork? And how could she explain what she was doing without boring her?

“Uh-- well, I’m still trying to figure that out,” she admitted. “It’s kind of complicated, but I’m trying to figure out if a translation of a primary source is really accurate, because I have some doubts about it. But there’s not a lot out there published, and I have to translate it myself but the scans from the original source are  _ so _ blurry, and-- sorry, this is probably way more than you needed to know.” 

“It’s cool,” she said, tilting her head to the side a bit. Her eyes, which had seemed so tired when she first got there, looked much more focused now as they tracked Adora. “I asked. Sounds pretty complicated, though.”

“Yeah,” Adora heaved a sigh. “I’ve been questioning what direction I want to go in for my thesis, and there’s just a lot of things I could do.”

“Well, I don’t envy you. I don’t think grad school and I would get along.”

“It’s really not that bad. I like it better than undergrad,” Adora admitted. “There’s more freedom to study what I want to study. But that means I need to  _ know  _ what I want to study, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Sometimes I wish I could be a double or triple major.”

Catra chuckled, shifting to lean back on her hands. “Overachiever much?”

Adora felt the familiar flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck. “Ha, yeah, you could say that.”

“Honestly, I think you’re not missing much from undergrad,” Catra said, looking off to the side of the gallery. “Other than some shitty parties, and most of those are a bunch of eighteen year olds getting too drunk anyway.” She snorted, rolling her eyes as she seemed to reminisce on something. “If you ever want to feel old, just go to one of those.”

Adora laughed, feeling some of the embarrassment melt away. “Yeah, I’m glad I don’t have to revisit that anymore. It must be hard to meet people, though.”

Catra shrugged, her eyes turning back to Adora. “It’s fine. I’m pretty particular about who I hang out with.” Suddenly, the weight of her gaze seemed much heavier. “I wouldn’t want to be around a lot of those people anyway.”

“Oh,” was all Adora could think to say. Catra’s eyes were still unwavering in meeting Adora’s own. “Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.”

After that, Adora couldn’t stop her brain from playing that one phrase on repeat--  _ I’m pretty particular about who I hang out with. _ How was she supposed to interpret that? On the one hand, Catra seemed to make a point of coming to the museum on the days that she was there. It felt like hanging out in a lot of ways, even though they were both technically working. But was it just convenient, since she had to be there for schoolwork anyway? If she wanted to hang out with Adora, wouldn’t they have already exchanged numbers?

A pang hit her in the stomach at that thought. No, she reassured herself, there must be something that made Catra continue to come visit. If she had wanted to, she could have ghosted Adora long ago. And they had hung out outside of work— at that coffee shop once. She remembered how much she’d enjoyed getting to know her more.

This mental back and forth played like an overture throughout the rest of their conversation. They talked about school, and Adora’s term paper, and a few other things she couldn’t recall, but she wasn’t fully paying attention. Not when so much of her brain had decided to focus on that one statement, and what it meant for the two of them.

That was the debate that occupied her thoughts right up until 12:00. When Catra got up to leave, she was almost surprised.

“Meet you in the lobby, right?” Catra had asked expectantly, making Adora shake herself out of the haze of thoughts competing for her attention.

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” she replied a second or two later. “Yeah, let me just run upstairs to get it, and then I’ll meet you.”

They’d gone their separate ways for a few minutes, Adora quickly scaling the steps to her office and Catra heading out towards the museum’s main lobby. It wasn’t long before Adora was pulling her desk drawer open to reveal the black leather of the sketchbook. After several hours of being away from it, she’d nearly forgotten how tempting it was. She quickly pushed away the urges to take a look and made her way back out to the lobby.

When she spotted Catra, eyes turned contemplatively up towards the lobby’s skylight, a warmth filled the space in Adora’s chest. Something about seeing Catra waiting for her made her feel unusually happy. She figured it was the relief at having the sketchbook safely back in Catra’s hands.

Or maybe it was knowing that something kept her coming around, something that Adora hadn’t figured out yet but fully intended to foster.

“Here you go,” Adora said as she walked up with the book in her outstretched hand. The mid-morning rays of light, harsh as they were, were somehow filtered through the skylight to create a halo of light around Catra’s face and shoulders. There was something beautiful in how she’d shifted her attention away from the skylight, gaze falling down to meet Adora’s own. 

“Thanks,” Catra had replied simply, fingers almost brushing Adora’s as the sketchbook exchanged hands. Adora immediately felt a huge weight lifted off her shoulders at the realization she didn’t have to keep the book safe anymore. Or have the urge to look at it, for that matter. “I’m so glad I didn’t actually lose this. Thanks for holding onto it for me.”

“Yeah, of course. I’m glad too.” Adora paused. They both seemed to wait, not sure of who would take the opportunity to speak.

“So, um, when are you here next?” Adora finally said after a second or two of uncertainty.

“Not sure. Maybe Tuesday,” Catra replied, a hand ruffling her hair in thought. “It depends on how much I can get done for my other assignments.”

“Okay,” Adora smiled, trying not to get her hopes up too much. “Well, good luck with those.”

“Thanks,” she sighed, already looking preoccupied at the mention of the assignments. “I’ll see you later.” 

“See you,” Adora replied with a little wave. Catra nodded, and Adora watched as she disappeared out the main entrance doors.

A few long seconds passed before she came to her senses. Adora shook her head to clear her mess of thoughts, moving to head back towards the office. At least now she could sit down for the rest of her break. 

Still, she couldn’t wait to see her again. 

\-- 

It was five days before Catra came back to the museum. All day Tuesday, Adora had been hoping she’d come by, but Catra had never showed up. Adora spent most of her shift wondering how her assignments were going and about the studio she’d mentioned offhand last time.

Other than the Tuesday she’d missed-- which seemed to be more a result of schoolwork than anything else-- Catra had been visiting almost every day that Adora had to work. Coincidentally, it’d been just a little bit easier to get ready for work each morning. The sting of her early alarm was alleviated knowing she had the possibility of seeing her that day. Her days at home or at the library doing schoolwork seemed much slower in comparison.

Adora knew that she shouldn’t expect Catra to show up every time she worked. It was ridiculous, really; clearly Catra had plenty of schoolwork to keep her busy. Knowing this didn’t stop her from hoping, though. She looked forward to their conversations so much that when a few extra days passed, it felt like they were long overdue to talk. 

So by the time Thursday came around, she had been more than ready to see her again. Adora had started actively looking for her in the throngs of museum guests. She wasn’t hard to recognize, really; Adora had learned to pick up on her from a ways away. Most of the time, she sported the art student uniform of the winter: usually some monochromatic combination of dark pants, boots, sweater, and heavy overcoat. As much as she didn’t care to admit it, Adora had also begun to recognize the way she moved-- her languid, fluid way of walking seemed in marked contrast to the hurried stature of the other museum patrons. Adora could usually spot her from a room or two over. But on Thursday afternoon, Adora had almost completely missed her walking into the gallery.

And when she had noticed her--  _ wow _ . It’d taken her a solid ten seconds to process what she was seeing and then regain the capacity for coherent thought. There was no way, she’d assured herself, that Catra could have known how much of a weak spot she had for women in suits. But there she was, wearing a simple white button down tucked into a pair of dark fitted trousers. She looked a perfect mix of disheveled and put together, her messy hair matching the sleeves she’d casually cuffed to the elbow. Her familiar backpack appeared starkly casual against the rest of the outfit. Unlike Adora’s uniform, the top few buttons on her shirt collar had been undone to expose a sliver of her collarbone. She didn’t wear a suit jacket— instead, a leather jacket was tucked under one arm. 

“Hey,” Adora greeted her, mouth feeling inexplicably dry. She was thankful her brain had caught up quickly enough to say something other than  _ wow _ .

“Hey,” Catra responded, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips. Most of the other times she’d visited, she hadn’t noticed Catra wearing any makeup. Today, though, she sported perfectly winged eyeliner. Adora wasn’t sure if it was the eyeliner or something else entirely, but her eyes seem to smolder more than usual.

“What’s the occasion?” Adora questioned. She tried to keep her tone level, despite how the outfit seemed perfectly engineered to remind her that she was incredibly, hopelessly gay.

“I had a presentation during class earlier, so, you know. Had to look presentable,” Catra shrugged innocently.

Adora fought the vicious urge to lick her lips. “You look nice,” she said, not even realizing she had said it until after it’d left her mouth.

“I know,” Catra replied, a smirk creeping onto her face as she placed one hand on her hip. “That’s kind of the point.”

“Right,” Adora managed somehow, although there was no way she could’ve been prepared for an answer like that. Catra just looked at her, seemingly getting more amused by the second.

“So, um, what assignment are you working on today?” Adora continued. It wasn’t great, but she knew she desperately needed to change the topic. Anything to avoid making an idiot of herself.

“Still life,” she answered simply, eyes not leaving Adora’s. She jerked her chin towards one of the statues off to Adora’s side. “Figured this would be a good place for that.”

Adora nodded, unsure of how else to answer. She got the distinct sense that Catra was doing all this on purpose; whatever it was, it was working. “Cool,” she finally said several seconds later, and it seemed to bring a faint smile to her face. Well, at least she knew Catra was enjoying seeing her make a fool of herself.

Without another word, Catra proceeded to unceremoniously sit down on the closest bench. Her setup was familiar to Adora now: that same well-worn backpack, the black leather-bound sketchbook, and the small case containing an assortment of pencils. She flipped the sketchbook open to a new page, positioned her body half away from Adora-- in the direction of a marble bust-- and got to work.

As she worked, Adora noticed how her posture seemed at odds with her formal outfit. She seemed to shift a lot as she worked, often pausing to hunch over or tilt her head or tuck one leg under another. Sometimes her face would scrunch up when she seemed to catch an error, or her eyes would narrow as she studied the statue in front of her.

“So, what is it that you guys actually do?” She looked up, and seeing Adora’s blank expression, continued. “Security guards, I mean.”

“Oh, um, it’s a lot of asking people not to touch the art,” she chuckled. “Making sure guests are following the rules and stuff, staffing special exhibits-- oh, and monitoring the cameras, which is super boring. And special events sometimes.”

“Special events?” Catra asked, cocking her head. “What, do rich people rent out the museum for weddings or something?”

Adora laughed. “I mean yeah, that happens sometimes. I haven’t worked those, though. But they have us work the museum’s other evening events.” 

“Like what?”

“They basically set up cocktail bars and have live music, and sometimes special tours or lectures,” she replied, eyes trailing off to the side while she remembered the most recent one. “People get dressed up nice for it and most of them get pretty drunk. Not just rich people, lots of regular people too. I guess it helps with getting donations to the museum.”

Catra snorted. “Sounds like it’d be a pain.”

“I actually don’t mind, as long as I’m not working a full shift the day of or the day after. The really drunk guests can be a little annoying, but there’s something cool about being in the museum after dark.” Adora shrugged. “The people-watching is much better than normal. People wear all sorts of crazy outfits.”

“I can imagine.” She leaned back from her sketchbook, one hand coming behind her. “Other than the getting dressed up part, it sounds interesting, actually.”

“Yeah, it seems like it’d be fun. My friends have been trying to get me to go with them for a while. But it’s still kind of expensive, so I haven’t gone yet.”

Catra frowned. “Don’t you get free tickets or anything?”

“I get like three free tickets a year, but they’re not valid for special events. Plus, I already gave mine to my roommates anyway.”

“Your roommates?” Catra’s eyebrows furrowed further, voice laced with disbelief. “That’s generous of you.”

“We’re really close,” Adora explained. “It’s not like I'm coming here on my off days. And even if I did, I wouldn’t have anyone to go with.”

“Hmm.” Catra angled her body more towards her, leaning forward to rest her chin in her hand. “I would’ve thought a jock like you would have plenty of options.”

Adora laughed before she even realized it. “Sorry to disappoint,” she chuckled at Catra’s mildly confused expression. “It’s just never really helped me with dating, I guess. It doesn’t help that I don’t know how to talk to girls.”

Catra’s face lit up with a vicious smile. “Uh, yeah, no shit.”

“Hey!” Adora laughed. “I know, but that doesn’t mean you have to say it!”

“Hey, I didn’t say it, you did,” she grinned, holding her hands up in front of her defensively. Adora just rolled her eyes, still smiling from the dying laughter.

They fell quiet for a bit. The gallery was more empty than normal, with it being relatively early on a weekday. Only a handful of older people walked slowly through the gallery and a few people sat on the benches across the room. Catra returned to her sketching, the scratching of the pencil on paper the only sound for a solid minute. 

“So, are you always in the same few galleries for assignments?” Adora asked, shifting her weight to her other foot restlessly. 

“Some are better for sketching than others,” she replied, head bobbing up as she looked back at the bust again. She paused to erase something and sweep eraser shavings off the page. “I bought a membership through my school, so I get in free for a few months. I figured once the semester is over, I’ll make it to the other galleries that I haven’t been to.”

Adora hummed in response. That would explain why, even as a student, she was able to afford to come so often for schoolwork. “Have you been to the modern art wing yet? I feel like that one might be difficult for sketching.”

“Not yet,” she shook her head, squinting at the marble bust. “Modern art’s kind of hit or miss for me anyway. Some of it’s cool, but it can get a little pretentious.”

“Hmm,” Adora mused, rocking back on her heels a bit as she thought. “Well, what types of art do you like, then?”

Catra paused to lean forward, resting her chin in her hand. She looked at Adora like she was going to answer, then thought better of it. “I’ll show you sometime. When you don’t have to work.”

“Oh,” Adora answered, the obvious surprise showing through in her voice. Every time Catra chose to spend time with her-- no matter how many times they’d seen each other already-- it surprised her. She wasn’t sure what Catra saw in her; for someone as interesting as her, she felt a little boring by comparison. “Yeah, okay.”

“Have you ever been here when you’re  _ not _ working?” Catra asked, scrutinizing her face closely. Something about her undivided attention was intense-- enough to almost make Adora want to squirm. Maybe it was some propensity of artists to study, to dissect, to break things down to the basic shapes that made them up. But something about it felt weirdly intimate. Adora noticed how from this angle, she could more clearly trace the patterns of freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks.

“Yes,” Adora replied defensively. “But it was a while ago.”

“Well then,” Catra drawled, eyes flicking back up to hers. “It sounds like we have to fix that.”

Adora gulped. Visiting an art museum with someone was kind of like a date, right?

No. Catra was just a new friend-- an acquaintance, even. Someone she barely knew in the grand scheme of things. Plus, friends could go to the art museum together. It didn’t have to be romantic. For every couple she saw at the museum, she also saw families, and school groups on field trips, and groups of friends and tourists. Adora even used to go with Bow and Glimmer to the natural history museum on their days off from school, just to snicker quietly as they pointed out all the bad taxidermy. 

Plus, technically, she and Catra had already been to the museum plenty of times together. It had just been unplanned.

“Uh, sure,” Adora said after a moment’s pause. “You’re not tired of it, though? Since you come here all the time?”

Catra shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve seen everything. And since you work here, you’re looking at it through different eyes. You should experience what it’s like as a visitor.”

Adora nodded. She wasn’t wrong, really. For all of her time working there, she’d learned a bit about some of the artists and pieces, but often forgot to really appreciate what was around her.

But she had an idea now. 

“One condition,” Adora added quickly, causing Catra to quirk her eyebrow.

“And that would be…?” she replied, crossing her arms incredulously.

“You show me your favorite spot in the museum,” Adora started, trying to gauge her reaction, “And I’ll show you mine.”

Catra tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowed and teeth tugging her lower lip as she considered it.

“What if I win?” she said after a moment, letting her expression shift into a determined smile. 

“Win?” Adora questioned, surprised.

“Yes, win,” Catra repeated, staring her down with a newly kindled fire in her eyes. “You strike me as the type of person who likes a good competition.”

“Oh.” Adora cleared her throat. It occurred to her that she had no idea what she was signing herself up for. “Uh, how would we win, exactly?”

“It’s simple,” Catra said with an air of nonchalance. “We’re trying to see things like neither of us has ever been here. So we show each other our favorite place in the museum, and whoever has a better one wins.” She paused, a smug grin painting her face. “I think it’ll be pretty clear which one of us  _ wows _ the other.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Adora nodded, as if she even needed to take a second to consider it. She didn’t; the implication that one of them had already won set her competitive side on edge. “So. What happens if you win?”

“If I win, you give me all of your discounted tickets to the museum for the next year,” Catra replied, an amused smile playing across her lips. Her voice practically brimmed with confidence.

“And what if I win?” Adora asked, trying and failing to prevent her competitiveness from shining through.

“If you win…” Catra started, drumming her fingers against her arm in thought. Her eyes wandered, not meeting Adora’s until she apparently had an idea. “I’ll give you my number.”

Adora tried her best not to visibly balk. “Deal,” she said quickly, as if waiting too long would make Catra rescind the offer. She held out her hand to shake on it.

Catra snorted in amusement but stood to offer her hand anyway. She may have been several inches shorter than Adora, but her handshake was firm, resolute, almost a challenge itself. Given what she knew of Catra’s personality, it shouldn’t have taken Adora by surprise as much as it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW thanks for sticking with me there everyone! I hope you enjoy seeing them get to know each other a bit more. Especially the part where Catra shows up in something other than normal clothes and Adora.exe stops working entirely (if you liked that part, you’ll probably really enjoy some of the moments in the next chapter ;) )
> 
> I’m moving houses soon, so I can’t make any promises as to the next update, but I have a lot of the next chapter written already and am hopeful I can get it posted for y’all to read while I’m busy with the move. As always, thanks for reading and for all your comments. They make my day ❤️
> 
> oh also I made a little moodboard to give some visual aesthetics to go along with this story! you can find it at https://gentlyqueer.tumblr.com/post/641068688802562048/like-a-work-of-art-art-student-museum-au-adora


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The alternate title for this chapter in my word doc was “she ra gays come get y’all juice” lmao
> 
> This has been a really fun chapter to write-- probably the one I've been most excited to share with all of you. hope y’all enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

Adora spent the next two weeks planning out her surprise. She wanted it to be perfect, because she hated losing at anything.

She racked her brain for the best spots in the museum: ones that were quiet but not too isolated, worthy of a “wow” without being cliche. She didn’t know how Catra expected to impress her, seeing as she’d seen just about everything the museum had to offer. Still, the confidence that Catra had carried herself with made her competitiveness flare. Catra had seemed so sure of winning; Adora wanted to prove her wrong.

Okay, _maybe_ she wanted her number too.

When they’d first made plans last week, they’d agreed to meet in the lobby at 1:00. The day of, Adora had actually gotten there about 40 minutes early-- partly due to the nerves, and partly because she needed to grab something for her surprise. 

When she arrived, she made a bee line for her office. Peeking in the door, it was staffed by a few people she didn’t recognize-- she hadn’t gotten to meet a lot of the people on this shift yet since she never worked Fridays. She’d given them a quick wave, flashed her ID, and apologized for the interruption, explaining that she’d forgotten her bag after her shift yesterday and was there to pick it up. They waved her on to get the shoulder bag that was slung haphazardly over the back of her chair. She’d grabbed it with a quick thanks and ducked back out.

In the stairwell she checked that her key ring was in there. Sure enough, it was just where she’d planted it on Thursday. It had all been planned out in advance so she’d have access to her employee key ring without having it conspicuously missing. Adora sighed a breath of relief as she tucked the key ring into her coat pocket. At least this part of her surprise had gone to plan. A little bit of weight felt lifted off her shoulders. It reminded her of when she left the first note back to Catra all those weeks ago, and how it’d felt like a bit of a spy mission. 

Man, she _really_ hoped that she was going to win. She’d put a lot of thought into all of this.

Not to mention all the time she’d spent picking out an outfit. Bow and Glimmer had stepped in to help as soon as they’d seen her nervously taking out half the clothes in her closet. She’d insisted to them that it was a casual hangout with a friend and _not_ a date and that she did _not_ need to wear something “super hot but also very gay,” as Glimmer had put it. Glimmer had countered her with the fact that she never put this much thought into any of her outfits so it must be something special. To be fair, she wasn’t exactly wrong. Adora hadn’t been able to think of a believable reply quick enough to deter them, so they’d started rooting through her clothes to find a suitable outfit. Adora had reluctantly accepted her fate; she had, at least, reminded both of them (very lovingly) that it was the middle of winter and crop tops were strictly off the table.

Adora plodded down the stairs back to the first level, ducking out of the side exit onto the sidewalk. Once she was outside, she checked her watch again. It was only 12:35 now, still way too early to be waiting for Catra. She decided that it was better to wait in the cafe across the street than at the museum itself. Her nerves were buzzing even as she ordered-- a decaf tea, in this case, to avoid further aggravating her anxiety. While she waited for her order, she toyed with the key ring in her pocket. Absentmindedly flipping through the keys didn’t calm her much, but at least it kept her hands occupied while her mind raced. When her order was called out, she sat at one of the street-facing tables. She sipped her tea absentmindedly while staring at the now imposing form of the museum. Her eyes tracked the people going in and out just in case any of them was Catra.

Finally, about five minutes before their designated meeting time, she made her way back across the street. She ran a shaky hand through her hair-- she had let it down after stopping by her office, as Glimmer had _insisted_ she was not allowed to wear a ponytail-- and took a shallow breath before pushing open one of the main entry doors.

When she entered, she quickly bypassed the line of visitors in the queue at admissions, simply waving her ID badge to one of the ticket sellers who let her pass through. As she walked into the main entrance hall, she slowed down to admire the grandiose architecture of the central lobby. Tall stone columns lined all sides of the first floor, partially obstructing her view of the gallery entrances. The cafe and gift shop were to her immediate right; the American painters gallery, straight ahead; and off to the left, a hallway to special exhibit spaces and the statue gallery entrance. Two grand staircases led up to the second floor, and a smaller set of stairs led down to the lower level’s classrooms and a few smaller galleries. Looking up, great marble arches drew the eye towards the massive glass skylight. The early afternoon light gave everything in the lobby a bright and slightly warm hue. It was a beautiful sight, one she saw three or four times a week but forgot to really pay attention to. Most of her mornings were spent hurrying upstairs to their office with her eyes glued to her phone; when she got off her shifts, she was usually too busy planning dinner or when she’d go to the gym to notice the splendor. She resolved to better appreciate where she worked the next time she came in.

Adora’s gaze came back down to the ground floor, and that was when she saw Catra waiting. She sat on a low bench opposite the cafe with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee. Her hands moved quickly, apparently texting someone as she hunched over her phone. Adora watched her for a moment before beginning to stride in her direction. 

“Hey,” Adora said when she was only a few feet away. Catra looked up in momentary surprise. When she realized who had addressed her, she quickly finished whatever she was doing and tucked the phone into her pocket.

“Hey,” she replied as she stood up. Adora noticed she was a touch taller than usual; looking down, she saw a pair of low heeled boots. Her eyes trailed up, taking note of the outfit: a not-quite-turtleneck sweater half tucked into a pair of skinny, high-waisted jeans, complemented by the same leather jacket from the other day.

Adora suddenly felt self-conscious of her own outfit, not sure if her button up and oversized denim jacket were too casual by comparison. Maybe she should have let Bow and Glimmer pick something a little more fancy.

“So, no ponytail today,” Catra remarked, an amused smile toying at one corner of her mouth. “Who’re you trying to impress?”

That got Adora to laugh, the butterflies slowing down a bit. As much as their little competition had set her nerves ablaze, this was Catra, after all. She did genuinely enjoy being around her when she wasn’t busy being tongue-tied. “My roommates insisted,” she replied. She hoped Catra hadn't noticed how she’d dodged her question, because the answer was obvious. “I don’t think they would’ve let me leave otherwise.”

Catra snorted in dry amusement. “I can break you out if they’re holding you hostage.”

“Thanks,” she chuckled. “They mean well, they just have a lot of opinions.” There was a brief pause where each of them seemed to be waiting for the other to talk. 

“So, um, which one of us is going first?” Adora asked after a second.

“You are,” Catra answered without hesitation. “Mine’s at a specific time.”

“Okay,” Adora replied, wondering what part of the museum would have a time limit. She tried not to think about it too much; it’d throw her off her game. “Can we wander around for a bit then? My thing would be better if we wait, too.”

“Sure,” Catra shrugged, seemingly indifferent. “Where do you want to go?”

Adora paused to take a look around the gallery entrances. She didn’t need a map, really, because she knew the place like the back of her hand. She could navigate it in her sleep or in the dark. But still, her mind seemed to be drawing a blank on where to go first.

“I have an idea,” she said after a few seconds. She started walking opposite the main galleries, towards the far corner of the first floor. 

“You sure this isn’t your thing?” Catra called out from behind her. She took a couple of quick paces to catch up to Adora’s long stride. “It seems kind of out of the way.”

“It’s not,” Adora said with a brief smile. “But it’s probably my second favorite place in the museum.”

“Hmm. Okay,” Catra said, scrutinizing Adora’s expression. “You don’t get bonus points for it though. That doesn’t count.”

“I don’t _need_ bonus points,” Adora replied. “You’ll see. Later.”

“Ooh, big talk. Look who’s getting confident,” Catra joked as she prodded Adora’s side with her elbow. Adora just rolled her eyes, starting down the stone staircase that descended before them. 

“Have you ever been to the lower level?” Adora asked over her shoulder. 

“No,” Catra admitted, hand trailing along the banister as she looked around. Even in the stairwell, there was art. Richly woven tapestries drew the eye upwards to emphasize the high ceilings. “I can’t say I have.”

“Most people haven’t,” Adora continued. “It’s mostly smaller and older galleries down here. And some classrooms for field trips, too. It’s kind of out of the way, so it’s less crowded.”

Catra just nodded, and Adora rounded the corner of the landing onto the second flight of stairs. At the bottom, a wide hallway led to classrooms ahead and to the left, while off to the right were entrances to two galleries.

“This way,” Adora said simply, heading down the long hallway. 

“I’m getting the full tour,” Catra commented, voice dripping with sarcasm, but Adora pretended not to hear. 

Adora tried not to get too far ahead of her, but her long stride and excitement at showing Catra her second favorite place in the museum betrayed her. Catra caught up, making some sort of remark about Adora walking too fast. Adora was busy reading the sign outside the entrance to the gallery.

“The _Harris Collection of Pacific Northwest Art,_ ” Catra read aloud, stopping next to Adora. She looked up at her quizzically. “I have to say, didn’t really see that one coming from you.”

Adora snorted. “I’m a history major, remember? Or am I not allowed to appreciate art and culture too?”

Catra crossed her arms. “No. You’re the hired muscle. _I’m_ the art aficionado.”

“Noted,” Adora chuckled as she stepped across the threshold into the gallery. Her footfalls were immediately muffled by the carpet lining the floor. The lights were dim inside and the walls painted dark. The occasional spotlight shone on exhibit pieces in glass cases.

“So,” Catra said with a look around to appraise the gallery. “What makes this your second favorite, then?”

Adora approached one of the displays lining the side of the room. It contained a mix of objects, from woven blankets to richly beaded jewelry.

“I took a class on indigenous art of the Pacific Northwest in college,” Adora replied as Catra came up alongside her. Catra’s eyes were trained on the objects in the case, but her eyebrows raised.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Adora chuckled. “I’m no professional, but I can appreciate art too sometimes.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Catra parried innocently, considering the objects in the case before taking a few steps over to the next. This one held an array of wooden masks adorned with bold red and black and white lines. 

Adora took a step towards the same case. “It was for a general ed requirement, but it was one of my favorite classes.” She shrugged. “I liked learning about the symbolism and all the different stories. I came to this gallery for one of our assignments, and I thought it was neat to see the things I’d been reading about in real life. Plus, it was so much less hectic than the other parts of the museum. I could just sit and write and no one bothered me.”

Catra nodded, slowly moving on to read the notes on the next case. “You know, for someone who has to deal with people all the time, you sure do like your peace and quiet.”

Adora smiled. “Don’t you?”

“Well yeah,” Catra turned to her. “But it’s not like I work a job where I have to deal with people. I can be as annoyed with them as I want.”

“Got it,” Adora laughed. “So you’ll be one of those artists that locks themselves away to paint for years?”

“No,” Catra said as she took a few steps towards a case in the center of the room. “I don’t _want_ a job where I have to deal with people, but it kind of comes with the territory.”

“And that would be what, exactly?” Adora asked curiously as she followed a few paces behind.

Catra looked at her for a second before responding, as if evaluating whether she was worthy of the answer. “A tattoo artist,” she finally replied before turning back toward the case. 

“Really?” Adora questioned, joining her in the center of the room. “Not that it doesn’t suit you, just— Do tattoo artists have to go to art school?”

Catra snorted. “They don’t have to. But I wanted to have something I could do in case it didn’t work out. I worked for a few years before going back to school, and I do _not_ want to go back to food service or retail. So I’m studying graphic design, too.”

“Huh.” Adora remarked. “Well, that’s responsible of you.” After a pause, she continued. “Wait, do you have tattoos, then?”

“Uh, yeah,” she snorted. “I wouldn’t trust a tattoo artist that _doesn't_ have any.”

Adora looked at her. She’d never noticed any tattoos, but with the cold weather, she’d always been pretty covered up. “What are they? Can I see?”

“If I didn’t know any better,” Catra began, her expression shifting as she smiled dangerously, “I’d think you were trying to undress me.”

“Wha-- no-- I wasn’t--” Adora sputtered, feeling her face flush from the embarrassment.

“Relax,” Catra laughed, her voice going back to normal. “I was just kidding. Oh my god, you’re _so_ easy to mess with.” 

Adora did her best to swallow the lump in her throat. Was she _trying_ to give her a heart attack? She just rolled her eyes, hoping it wouldn’t betray how embarrassed she was.

“Maybe you’ll see them sometime,” Catra added casually, eyes scanning the gallery. “You’ll just have to use your imagination for now, though.” Then-- in a move that Adora swore was purely to fuck with her-- she had the audacity to _wink._

“You’re ridiculous,” Adora huffed. She strode off to the next case before inadvertently adding any more fuel to her fire. 

By the time they’d reached the end of the small gallery, Adora was immensely grateful. She’d become increasingly more aware of the quiet in between the moments where they talked. She constantly second guessed if Catra was having a good time— because what if she was secretly bored out of her mind? Plus, the thought of the two of them being alone made a strange nervousness surge through her. The idea had made her pick up her pace walking through the rest of the gallery.

When they emerged from the gallery into the bright, echoing hallway of the lower level, somehow it felt like a heavy weight had been lifted off her chest. She hadn’t been prepared for the toll this day would take on her nerves. 

It wasn’t long before the two of them had made their way back up the stairwell to the main floor. Adora found herself standing in front of the museum map again, looking blankly for any direction on where to go.

“So, where to next?” Adora asked. She hoped Catra wouldn’t make her choose. The residual nervousness from the last gallery was being replaced by worrying about her surprise going smoothly.

Catra took a few moments to consider the options on the map. “What about modern art?” she questioned.

“Sure,” Adora said with a shrug, feeling relieved she’d had an idea. “Although I feel like it goes way over my head most of the time.”

“That’s what I’m here for, right?” she replied, turning to her. “To help you appreciate it?”

“True,” Adora replied. She couldn’t help but wonder if that was _all_ Catra was here for. “Works for me.”

They headed up one of the main stairwells to the second floor, past the European painters gallery where Catra had first shown Adora the painting of _Ophelia_ , and to the opposite side of the floor. The entrance to the modern art gallery stood before them; it was an area that Adora wasn’t as familiar with, since she was rarely stationed there.

When they entered the modern art gallery, Adora noticed a couple of people on the other end of the cavernous room, but otherwise it was mostly empty. Through her shifts, she had seen that fewer people tended to come here-- the American and European painting galleries, along with the Greco-Roman statues, were much more popular-- even on busy Fridays like these. 

The modern art collection itself wasn't the museum’s most extensive, but it was housed in one of the larger gallery wings. The gallery’s main entrance led them into a large, open space painted in a stark white. Paintings, photographs, and prints lined the walls, along with smaller 3D pieces scattered around the perimeter. The focal piece of the entry room was a ten-foot-tall wave, constructed from tiny pieces of paper suspended from the ceiling. To their left and right, additional rooms branched off to other parts of the gallery. Adora could see a large, brightly colored installation in the middle of the next room, but couldn’t make out what it was.

Amidst all the art competing for their attention, Adora couldn’t help but notice the hush that fell over the rooms. She was used to it in some ways, of course; working at the museum, there were times where she was alone in the mostly-empty galleries. In some sense, she had gotten used to the paradoxical way that the plain white walls both held onto and echoed every small sound. But something felt different this time. It felt intimate, as if they had it all to themselves. That thought made her a little nervous. 

Adora did her best to push down the nerves as they went to examine the focal piece of the room. It helped that Catra seemed undaunted by the quiet. She prompted Adora to try and figure out the meanings behind each piece, sometimes scoffing at flowery descriptions on the placards. 

They went through the first room, passing by the wave and a handful of pop art-style paintings. Room after room was filled with all sorts of art, from the interactive (Adora particularly liked the old TV set that you had to sit on the floor to watch) to the incomprehensible (the most confusing being a canvas that just said “run dog run”). Catra seemed particularly interested in the reconstruction of a hallway from an artist’s childhood home; it was rendered in translucent colored acrylic, casting fuschia and turquoise and blood orange hues on everyone who walked through it.

Adora wasn’t paying her full attention to the paintings and sculptures, though. Her eyes fell more to Catra than any of the art in the gallery. With few people to distract her and the static nature of the art installations, Catra’s movements seemed even more graceful than usual. It wasn’t fair to the art, really, because how could it compete with her? 

“Adora?” The sudden sound of her name snapped her out of her thoughts and back to the present.

“Huh?” She replied quickly. She was embarrassed at being caught spacing out again-- even more so because of who she was spacing out about.

“I was asking what you think this one means,” Catra repeated, crossing her arms. One eyebrow was raised, but otherwise she refrained from commenting on Adora’s state of distraction. She jerked her chin upwards at the piece in question. A small-scale replica of the New York skyline floated above them, its iconic buildings hanging upside down from a 7-foot-tall metal frame. Tiny lights illuminated the buildings, making it seem surprisingly lifelike even in its surreal state.

“Oh. Uh,” she paused, eyes tracing over the miniature version of the Chrysler building, “I’m not sure.” A second later, she continued: “What do you think?”

“It's probably how our world is turned upside down by technology, or something like that,” Catra snorted, moving around the side of the piece to read the placard on the ground. She squinted as she read it, arms crossed in front of her chest. Adora allowed her gaze to linger for a few seconds, appreciating just how nice she looked in the leather jacket, before forcing herself to look back up at the city skyline.

“It’s about imagining your own ideal city,” Catra said, walking back over to Adora’s side and looking up. “So I was close.”

Adora smiled. “Sounds like it.”

“Is that sarcasm? That better not be sarcasm, because that’s my thing,” Catra narrowed her eyes. 

“It’s not, promise!” Adora tried to assure her, but Catra was already beginning to stride off towards the next piece. She waved dismissively over her shoulder, laughing as she did, barely turning back to see if Adora followed behind.

Adora lagged a few steps behind Catra, wanting to appreciate the time they had together. Something in the way she moved was like a work of art: the way her hips swayed gently as she walked, the slight tilt to her head as she scanned the paintings, how her fingers absentmindedly ran through her messy short hair.

Despite working in the museum for a year and a half, Adora had never considered herself qualified to appreciate art.

Maybe being around Catra was changing that.

\--

After finishing the loop of the modern art gallery, the two had headed back to the main entry hall on the first floor. Adora checked her watch for the tenth time in the last few minutes. It was nearly 4:15 now; only 45 minutes before close. She’d asked Catra more than once if it was time for her thing yet, and every time she’d refused, saying she’d let her know. It was time to execute Adora’s own plan.

“It’s time for my thing,” she said offhandedly. She tried to keep her tone casual; she didn’t want to betray how excited she was. For the better part of the day she had been nervous, but now that was slowly being superseded by anxious excitement. She was confident she had really hit it out of the park with this one.

“Alright, then,” Catra replied, turning towards her. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Adora just nodded, taking off in the direction of the stairwell to the second floor.

“I’ve seen everything up here,” Catra called after her. “So it better be something good.”

Adora shrugged, trying not to let anything bleed into her voice that’d give her away. She began scaling the steps to the second floor. It took conscious effort not to take the stairs two at a time. “You haven’t seen this. And it _is_ good.”

“If you say so,” Catra replied, her tone teasing. Adora didn’t respond; she’d see soon enough, and it’d be worth it. 

As they emerged onto the second floor, Catra seemed confused when they passed by all the gallery entrances. Instead, Adora opted to go down a plain hallway past some nondescript elevators. 

“Where are we going?” Catra asked suspiciously. Adora produced the key ring from her coat pocket and flipped through until she found the one she was looking for. 

“You’ll see,” Adora smiled back, slotting the key into the lock on the plain metal door. Its only defining feature was a sign that read NO ENTRANCE BEYOND THIS POINT - EMPLOYEES ONLY. The lock clicked, and Adora tucked the keys back into her pocket.

“After you,” she said cheekily, holding the door open and motioning Catra to enter. Catra’s eyes narrowed as she stepped past Adora and into the stairwell. Unlike the grand stairwells in the main building, which were all marble balustrades and lush tapestries, this stairwell was designed for staff. It was plain and unadorned, its simple white metal showing wear and tear from decades of use.

“You better not be taking me to the basement to murder me,” Catra muttered, eyes cautiously scanning the flights of stairs. “That’s definitely against the rules.”

“Don’t worry,” Adora laughed, already starting to scale the steps. She paused to look back at Catra, who remained unmoving on the landing. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“That’s exactly what a murderer would say,” Catra huffed before reluctantly following behind.

Three flights of stairs later, they reached a dead end. A single unremarkable door labeled ROOF ACCESS stood in front of them. Adora turned back to see an incredulous Catra.

“For real?” Catra asked, her tone genuinely surprised. She crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Yeah. Unless you’re too scared?” Adora grinned.

“In your dreams,” Catra rolled her eyes. “Let’s go, then.” 

Adora smiled and pushed the heavy door open to a rush of cool air. “Welcome to the best view in the museum,” she said with a gesture towards the open door. Catra snorted, stepping past her and onto the roof. Once she emerged, she walked in a slow circle to take in the view. 

The rooftop of the museum offered a panoramic view of the city. Nearly two hundred and seventy degrees around, in fact. Just south, a sprawling green park continued on as far as the eye could see. Across the street, an ultra-futuristic building was home to one of the city’s best modern art collections. Cream-colored limestone structures stretched for blocks, home to some of the area’s most luxurious apartments. Bodegas and hip brownstones filled in the spaces in between. To top it all off, the city was awash in the golden glow of the pre-twilight sun, making the windows of the buildings glitter like jewels. 

Catra nodded slowly as she looked around. “How long did it take you to plan this one, then?”

Adora shrugged noncommittally as she caught up next to her. “Eh, you know. Come on, over here is the best spot.”

She made her way to the corner of the building, then hoisted herself up onto one of the tall metal boxes set about eight feet back from the edge. Catra followed suit, hopping up deftly next to her. 

She’d waited to bring Catra up here for a reason. It was golden hour, her favorite time of day. The beige stone of the museum was tinted orange in the late afternoon light; The city stretched before them for miles, countless rows of buildings taking on an orange hue from the sun’s dying rays.

It was just as magical as Adora had hoped. 

“It’s one of my favorite views of the city,” Adora said, leaning in to bump Catra’s shoulder with her own. Her voice was low; the wind had died down for now, and they could hear the distant noise of traffic drifting up from the street. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Catra nodded, eyes scanning the landscape as she took it all in. She tucked her knees under her chin, arms wrapping around her legs. Then she looked back at Adora. “You’re pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah!” Adora laughed. “If someone brought me up here, I’d be pretty impressed. Just saying.”

“Don’t get too full of yourself,” Catra teased, sticking her tongue out at her. “You haven’t seen what I’m planning yet.”

“Right, right. I’ll withhold judgment til then.” Adora smiled, fascinated by how the clouds reflected back at them from the curved glass facade of the museum across the street. After a moment, though, she turned back to Catra ever so slightly, enough to catch a glimpse of her but not enough to tip her off. She looked serene, her eyes tracking something or someone across the street. 

They fell quiet for a minute as they drank in the scenery. Despite her best efforts, Adora couldn’t focus on the view. She felt herself growing increasingly more antsy until she broke the silence. 

“I never got the chance to apologize,” she said suddenly, as if the words had risen out of her chest of their own volition. 

“For what?” Catra asked, her eyebrows scrunched as she looked back at Adora.

“For staring at you,” Adora replied. “That first time, in the gallery. When my radio went off. I was really embarrassed. I’ve been meaning to apologize ever since.”

“Oh, that?” Catra snorted. “It’s fine. I’ve kind of learned to tune out people staring,” she shrugged. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, you were _pretty_ obvious about it.”

“Yeah,” Adora replied sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”

Catra just shrugged, leaning forward to rest her chin on her knee. “It’s fine, really.”

Adora bit the inside of her cheek. There was another topic she’d been trying to broach, but something had stopped her each time. Now was as good a time as any, she figured. She took a steadying breath before continuing.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, actually,” Adora started, eyes fixed on the button on her jacket that she fiddled with. She tried to ignore the nervous energy filling her chest. 

“Oh boy,” Catra deadpanned. “Watch out, detective Adora is back again.”

Adora rolled her eyes, ignoring the joke to continue. “Why did you start leaving me those notes in the first place?”

Catra leaned back on her hands, turning back out to look at the landscape before her. “You mentioned it that one time, but I’m surprised you never brought it up again.”

“I meant to, I just…” _Got distracted by how cute you are? Got too flustered?_ “...could never find the right time, I guess.”

Catra just shrugged as she turned back to Adora. “I was here for class, and you looked bored as hell. And then I noticed you staring at me, so I thought I’d give you something else to do.”

Adora frowned. It was such a simple answer, but it didn’t satisfy her. Why would someone go to such lengths to entertain a stranger? And why her, when there were so many other security staff at the museum?

“Why me, though?” She prodded, angling herself more towards Catra. “It seems pretty out of your way to do all that for someone you don’t know. And we probably all look pretty bored. So out of all the security guards, why me?”

Catra leaned forward to rest her chin on her hand. She studied Adora’s face, lips pressed together as her eyes narrowed. “Why do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Adora admitted after a moment, looking up towards the orange-hued sky. “I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since that first note.”

A few moments of silence elapsed as Catra watched her carefully. What she was looking for, Adora couldn’t tell. All she knew was that her butterflies quickened the longer those intense eyes lingered on her. 

“If you haven’t figured it out by now,” Catra said finally, “maybe you’re even dumber than I gave you credit for.”

“Wha-- hey!” Adora replied indignantly. “That’s not fair, you can’t just not answer like that!”

“Can too,” Catra laughed. Adora tried to drink in her melodic, scratchy chuckle. In her opinion, she hadn’t heard it nearly enough. 

“You’re the worst,” Adora continued with a roll of her eyes. “I can’t believe you.” 

A self-satisfied smile took over Catra’s face. “Thanks, I try.”

Not sure what else to say, and not wanting to talk just for the sake of talking, Adora cast her eyes back out towards the cityscape. The wind picked up a bit, bringing a chill that caused her to hug her jacket closer. Clouds meandered through the sky lazily. Every once in a while, she’d pick out a bird flying by or a person on the street below to watch until she couldn’t track them anymore.

After a minute or two, she’d begun to question if she should say something. She looked back towards Catra, who had tightly crossed her arms over her chest-- by the looks of it, to shield herself from the cold.

“Ready to go?” Adora chuckled.

“Yeah,” Catra replied, hopping down from their makeshift spot. “It’s pretty and all, but it’s fucking cold.”

Adora agreed as she dropped back down onto the rooftop. After a moment, she frowned. “Wait, if the museum is closing soon, are we going to have time to do your thing?”

“Don’t worry, detective, I planned for that,” Catra replied, already walking backwards toward the roof access door. Adora just snorted, following behind her to unlock it.

As they descended the stairs towards the second level, Adora was quiet. She checked her watch again; it was almost 20 minutes to close. What could Catra be planning that would be so quick? She racked her brain but came up empty. They passed the elevators, the second floor gallery entrances, and made their way to the last staircase leading to the first floor. By the time they emerged onto the main landing, Adora was no closer to figuring out Catra’s plan. If anything, she was more confused.

She should’ve known this girl would keep her on her toes. 

“So, what’s this thing you’re trying to show me right before close?” Adora asked as they joined the crowds of people milling about the main entrance hall. “You know, there’s probably still time to concede defeat. My thing was _pretty_ good.”

“You’ll see,” Catra responded vaguely, already beginning to walk with a purpose. Adora didn’t press her as she followed behind. She had a feeling Catra wouldn’t say more until she was ready, anyways.

They moved back through the main entrance hall, past groups of people who lingered close to the exit. At this time of the day, most of the guests were leaving or getting ready to leave. An announcement had been made a few minutes ago that it was twenty minutes to close. That usually got people moving, or at least hurrying through the galleries to see those last few pieces before leaving.

But they moved in the opposite direction of everyone else. Catra led them towards the far corner of the first floor, heading down a hallway marked _Special Exhibit Space._

Adora frowned; the only exhibit in this area had closed an hour ago. And it had timed tickets. In spite of this, Catra headed further into the hallway.

“You’re joking,” Adora muttered half in disbelief as they rounded the corner. Although she couldn’t see the end of the hallway from here, she knew what was at the end of it-- she had worked this area plenty of times since the new exhibit opened two months ago. The hallway that curved ahead of them was long and blank, its smooth concrete walls unmarred by any doors. It had been designed primarily to control crowds of guests waiting for the museum’s rotation of limited exhibits. Adora knew that at this point, there was no other place they could be going. 

Catra came to a stop a few steps ahead of her. “Don’t tell me you’ve already been in here before. This was my only shot at winning against the museum employee.”

To Catra’s credit, this must have been the one part of the museum that Adora hadn’t seen yet. With a months-long waitlist and near impossible-to-get tickets-- plus a strict off limits warning to staff-- Adora hadn’t gotten the chance to experience the new exhibit for herself.

“No,” she answered after a beat. “I haven’t.”

Catra’s expectant expression quickly changed into a smug one. “Good. Then you’re going in blind.”

Adora gulped; she really did feel like she was going in blind, in more ways than one. She didn’t have much time to think about it before Catra started off down the long hallway. Adora quickly followed after her.

Catra turned back to face her, walking backwards down the corridor.

“I’m assuming you have a key,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes,” Adora answered unsteadily, running her fingers over the keyring in her pocket. She was going to be breaking _so_ many rules to do this. “Couldn’t you have just gotten tickets like anyone else?”

“You and I both know that this is booked out for months. Didn’t exactly have that kind of time,” Catra said as she eyed her over. “Man, you’ve had a key this whole time and you _still_ haven’t been in yet? Curiosity would have killed this cat by now.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not supposed to,” Adora huffed, looking off to the side.

“Such a rule-abiding citizen,” Catra tsked. Her smile had an air of danger to it. “Not for long, if you hang around me.”

Adora wasn’t sure how to respond, but she didn’t have to, because they reached the end of the hallway. Catra stopped abruptly in front of the door, turning to face Adora.

“This could get me fired, you know,” Adora said with a hint of annoyance, even as her heart pounded in anticipation of what they were about to do.

“You don’t have to do it,” Catra responded, eyes playful. “But then I win automatically. Plus, you’ll only get fired if we get caught.”

Adora’s nostrils flared. She _hated_ losing. “Fine,” she said after a moment, pressing her lips together. “Are we going in, or what? We only have a few minutes before security does the last sweep.”

Catra smiled wider. “Go ahead,” she chuckled, moving away from the door so Adora could unlock it. 

Adora fumbled with the key, her hands sweaty from the nerves. She heard a _pop_ as the door unlocked, and it felt as loud as a gunshot in the otherwise quiet hallway. With one hand on the doorknob and one hovering over the panel of buttons off to the side, Adora locked eyes with Catra.

“Once I push the button, we have 10 seconds to go in, and then 60 seconds inside,” she warned, tone different from her usual explanation to guests who were about to enter. 

Catra nodded, but right before she pressed the button, Catra put her hand over Adora’s on the doorknob.

“Wait,” she said, and Adora detected the slightest waver around the edges of her voice. Adora paused, fingers only a hair away from the button. Catra’s hand felt warm over hers. 

“What?” Adora asked hurriedly, ignoring the electric feeling blooming across the back of her hand.

“Once you press the button, close your eyes,” Catra commanded. Adora swore her voice seemed a fraction softer than it normally was.

“Why--”

“It’s part of the surprise,” Catra interrupted. Adora closed her mouth.

“Fine,” she grumbled, although her pulse pounded in her ears. “Ready?”

“Yup. You?”

“Yeah,” Adora replied, although she wasn’t sure if she really was. Regardless, she finally let her fingers press down on the button. She clamped the cover back down over the buttons and then quickly closed her eyes.

A squeak came from the door hinge as it opened, and then it stopped abruptly as the door seemed to be propped open.

“Follow me,” Catra murmured, and Adora nodded. Before she could ask how, she felt Catra’s hands wrap around her wrists. She tried not to shiver as Catra tugged her gently into the cool, dark room. Adora let her fingers wrap around the underside of Catra’s forearms in return, feather light, telling herself it was just so she didn’t fall. In the background, she was vaguely aware of the sound of the door closing behind them.

“Just a couple more steps,” Catra said steadily. Adora focused in on the sound of Catra’s heeled boots clicking against the floor. The only other thing she could hear was the gentle patterns of their breathing. 

A few seconds later, Catra’s footsteps came to a stop. “You can open your eyes now,” she said, her voice low.

Adora obliged. For a split second it was pitch black, so dark that she couldn’t see Catra even though she was only an arm’s length away. The air felt thick and cool, like she was breathing in a heavy fog.

Before she had time to think anything else, the lights came on with a click.

Adora blinked for a few seconds as her eyes adjusted, gaze drifting up to the ceiling and then to her side. They were surrounded by an array of tiny lights that stretched as far as the eyes could see. From standing outside it for a month, Adora knew that this was an optical illusion created by lining the room with mirrors-- including the ceiling and floor-- and adding dozens of lights. The way they reflected off all the mirrors made it look like a neverending galaxy of tiny stars. She knew this, and yet it didn’t manage to make it any less beautiful now that she was inside.

“Wow,” Adora breathed, turning and feeling Catra’s hands falling away from her. At eye level seemed to be a horizon where the lights converged, giving the appearance that the room went on for miles. Looking down, it even continued to the floor, save for the only non-mirrored surface that they stood on: a catwalk in the center of the room. It looked like a platform floating in the middle of a starry sky. Even the back of the door was mirrored, adding to the illusion that it went on forever. And it was absolutely breathtaking.

She turned back to find Catra’s eyes tilted up, scanning slowly, the constellations of freckles on her face illuminated by the myriad of tiny lights. When Catra noticed her looking, her gaze drifted down to meet Adora’s. The corner of her mouth curled up ever so slightly.

“Pretty good, right?” Catra asked, voice still quiet.

“Yeah,” Adora whispered. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt as if talking at a normal volume would be irreverent.

Catra grinned this time. Adora smiled in return and spun slowly on her heels, this time completing a full three hundred sixty degree turn. They fell quiet, and the silence seemed to make the room feel bigger and the catwalk they shared much, much smaller.

Adora turned back to Catra, who faced away from her now as she stared at her own silhouette reflected on the walls. Adora felt compelled to move closer to her, as if guided by an unseen magnetic force.

“Catra,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. Catra half-turned back. Adora stepped closer, gently taking her hand even as her heart worked double time.

Catra shot her a quizzical look, glancing between Adora’s hand and her face.

“Thank you,” Adora whispered with a squeeze of her hand. Some warm feeling in her chest swelled. “This is just-- wow.”

Catra’s expression changed, a questioning look turning into a bemused one, and then slowly into something else. She seemed to become much shier, more uncertain, a side of her that Adora hadn’t seen before. Adora could see her swallow as she took a step closer. Catra stopped when she was only a half pace away, their still-joined hands now at their sides. Her gaze dropped a few inches lower. 

“You’re welcome,” she breathed, and this close Adora could feel her presence crackling like electricity. Her words seemed more like an invitation than a response to Adora’s thank you. An invitation to what, Adora didn’t know, but her mind spun with the possibilities.

Time seemed to slow as Adora felt her lips part, an invisible thread pulling her chest closer to Catra’s. The gentle humming of the lights faded into the background, giving the impression that they were in their own space separate from the outside world. The blood roared in her ears so loud it drowned out everything else.

Then, the timed lights clicked off, and they were plunged into pitch black.

“Shit!” she heard Catra hiss, and a few seconds of rustling later she saw Catra’s phone flashlight illuminate a sliver of the walkway.

“Come _on_!” Catra urged, and Adora realized she hadn’t moved from her space at the end of the catwalk. Catra was already two strides ahead of her, close to the door.

“Right,” Adora muttered, clumsily following the light as she willed herself to move too.

The door squeaked again as it opened. The light from the hallway seemed to blind Adora after the pitch black. She blinked into it as she followed Catra out of the room. 

No sooner than she’d closed and hurriedly locked the door, Adora heard a voice at the far end of the hallway.

“10-4,” the voice said, and Adora began to hear footfalls coming down the corridor.

“Fuck,” Adora whispered. It wasn’t a voice she recognized. She scanned the hallway; it was long and blank, meant for queues only. There were no doors to duck into, nowhere to go other than back into the room.

“What do we do?” Catra whispered, looking expectantly at Adora.

“Uhh--” Adora hesitated, knowing that their options were severely limited.

“Isn’t there a supply closet, or something?” Catra whispered, voice growing more urgent as the footsteps grew louder. It was hard to tell just how close they were because of the echo in the hallway. “In movies there’s always a supply closet!”

“Well there’s not!” Adora whispered with a tone of exasperation. She saw Catra glance towards the door to the mirrored room.

“We can’t,” she said, sensing what she was about to suggest. “They always check. _Always_.”

“Well fuck!” Catra hissed back. “What the hell are we supposed to do?”

Adora racked her brain; she was coming up blank. Meanwhile, the sound coming down the hallway was getting louder with every second. 

“Fuck, okay,” Catra grumbled, palm meeting her face. “I have a plan. Just, go with it or whatever.”

Adora’s eyebrows furrowed as she squinted at Catra, but after a half second she just mouthed _fine_.

Catra jerked her chin up and over towards the wall, and she mouthed _go_ to emphasize the message. Adora walked backwards, Catra following her, until her heels hit the wall. She looked down as one of Catra’s hands landed at the base of her neck, the other placed gently on the small of her back, and her own eyes widened in realization.

“Are you--” Adora was interrupted by Catra pulling her down, stopping when her lips were just a fraction of an inch away from Adora’s neck. 

“ _Go with it_ ,” Catra reminded her, voice barely a whisper. Her words fell warm against Adora’s skin; the sensation of lips brushing her neck set her head spinning. Adora did her best to ignore the feeling, instead choosing to place her hands tentatively on Catra’s waist. You know, to _go with it_. 

It was just in time, too, because the footsteps had come to a stop.

“Oh, god! Uh,” a voice said, and Adora instinctively turned to see who it was. She felt Catra look up too. It was one of the newer recruits; his name was Karl, or Kale, or Kyle, or something like that. She silently thanked whatever god there was that it wasn’t one of her coworkers she knew too well. If it had been Lonnie, she didn’t think she would ever be able to show her face in the museum again. With her hair down, though, she hoped she wasn't too recognizable, since she’d only seen him in passing.

He held up a hand as if to block them from view, and his head jerked away. “Uh, okay, you have to go because we’re closing soon,” he said, voice shaky and unsure.

“Sorry!” Adora apologized hastily, cheeks flaring crimson. She straightened up so quickly that she nearly collided with Catra. “We’re going!” She grabbed Catra’s hand and pulled her down the hallway, the new guy replying with a weak “okay” as they passed.

Once they were out of earshot, she dropped Catra’s hand and checked behind the both of them.

“ _That_ was your big plan?” Adora whispered accusingly as they exited the hallway. “You could’ve said, I don’t know, that we were checking if it was still open or something?”

“Yeah right,” Catra rolled her eyes. “If I caught two people down there 10 minutes to close, I would have assumed they were doing that anyway.”

Adora huffed, shoving her hands into her pockets with more force than was necessary. The keys jingled in her pocket as she did. 

She could tell Catra was looking at her out of the corner of her eye, but with the blush creeping up her neck she didn’t want to look back. Not yet.

“Look,” Catra said, voice insistent but not as confident as before. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, it was just— the first thing that I thought of.”

 _The first thing she thought of?_ Adora’s eyebrows knit together, and she looked back at her quickly. “No, it’s not-- I mean-- it’s not that. It’s fine,” she said, smoothing her hand over her face and then her hair. “I mean, it caught me by surprise, but it worked, right? We’re all good.” 

“Yeah. All good,” Catra said, eyes lingering on Adora’s face for a few seconds.

Adora turned ahead as they exited the hallway. She ran a hand through her loose hair in relief. “I’m just glad it wasn’t one of my other coworkers, because then I’d be in big trouble. I don’t think he even recognized me.”

“Yeah,” Catra said; she sounded more sure of herself this time. “That would’ve been bad.” 

They walked in silence for a minute as they moved towards the exit. Adora willed herself to say something that would make it less awkward. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find anything that didn’t sound stupid.

“Well,” Adora finally said as they stepped out of the main exit doors and into the cold air. She turned toward Catra, nodding. “It looks like you won.”

Catra raised an eyebrow and turned towards her. “Just like that? Whatever happened to you being competitive?”

“I mean, we _did_ technically get caught, and I feel like I should take points off for you almost getting me fired,” Adora laughed. “But I’m a good sportsman. I know when I’ve been beat,” Adora shook her head, shrugging as her lips pressed together. “I literally said _wow._ Twice. I think you won fair and square.”

One corner of Catra’s mouth tugged up into a smile. It wasn’t quite as smug as Adora had been expecting; she’d honestly been prepared for Catra to tease her about it endlessly if she lost. The smile was warmer, though, and it seemed to be infectious, because Adora soon found herself smiling too. This time, Catra was the one who held out her hand for Adora to shake.

“Good game,” she said, waiting for Adora to offer her hand.

Adora chuckled. “Good game,” she repeated, slotting her hand into Catra’s and shaking. 

“Come on,” Adora said, starting down the steps of the museum, and Catra followed a few paces behind. 

“So, about those tickets,” she called over her shoulder.

“Don’t tell me you made them up,” Catra interrupted accusingly. Adora laughed again as Catra caught up to her.

“No, no,” Adora assured her, grinning. “They’re real, I promise. When do you want them? I can bring them in one day.”

Catra shrugged. “I’ll get them from you later,” she said. 

“Sure,” Adora said, feeling pathetic for hoping there was more meaning to that statement.

They rounded the corner, coming up on the entrance to the closest subway station.

“I’m that way,” Catra said with a thumb over her shoulder as she slowed down. Adora stopped in her tracks.

“Can I walk you home?” Adora asked, not wanting them to go their separate ways just yet.

Catra snorted. “For all you know, I could live halfway across the city.”

Adora rolled her eyes. “Ride with you on the subway, then. You know what I mean.” 

Catra paused to consider, then rocked back on her heels. “Not this time,” she said, and Adora tried to ignore the little drop that seemed to happen in her stomach. She did her best not to get too hopeful that there might be another time. “I have to keep some sort of air of mystery about me, after all.”

She couldn’t help but smile then. “Sure,” she said simply. “Well, thanks for today.”

“One more thing,” Catra said, taking out something from her jacket pocket. She kept her fist tightly closed around it, watching Adora’s gaze fall to her hand.

“Eyes up here,” she joked darkly. Adora felt her eyes snap up to Catra’s face, as if she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to.

Adora’s mouth opened to ask what she was doing. Sensing it, Catra cut her off. “No questions,” she said, voice low and silky as she stepped closer. Adora closed her mouth again, throat suddenly feeling dry. Her heartbeat hammered rhythmically in her chest.

Another step closer and they were nearly toe to toe now. Something mischievous glowed in Catra’s eyes; Adora felt a shiver run down her spine despite all the layers of clothing.

Catra tiptoed up, getting closer and closer to Adora’s face-- and then she stopped, just inches away, to tuck the object in her hand into the breast pocket of Adora’s coat.

Adora let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Don’t you dare look at that until I’m out of sight,” Catra warned, not breaking eye contact.

Adora could barely answer, just managing a nod as she swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Goodnight, Adora,” Catra smirked, sinking back down to her usual height and taking a step backwards.

“Goodnight,” Adora replied, head reeling from whatever had just happened.

With a curt nod, Catra turned on her heel and headed off in the opposite direction. Adora was left stuck in place, desperately wanting to reach for whatever she’d been given but waiting dutifully until Catra turned the corner.

Once her silhouette disappeared, Adora shook her head and reached into her coat pocket. She pulled out a piece of paper, neatly folded in the same style as Catra’s original notes. She unfolded it with shaky hands and an even shakier heartbeat. 

When she returned it to its flattened state, she smiled from ear to ear. Three lines graced the paper in scrawled handwriting:

_Consolation prize_

_212-555-0136_

_-C_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW hope you enjoyed what was probably my favorite chapter to write!! What will our fave dumb lesbian do now? Stay tuned to find out!
> 
> Some notes on inspiration- the modern art gallery in this chapter was inspired by the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, Australia, which I visited with a friend; the art of the PNW wing is inspired by an exhibit I saw at the Field Museum in Chicago. (I actually took a class on indigenous art of the PNW in college, and it was one of my favorite classes, which inspired Adora's choice as her favorite gallery.) The mirrored room is based on Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room-The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away.” I HIGHLY recommend looking it up, I was lucky enough to visit it a few years ago at the Broad in LA and it is absolutely beautiful, words can’t do it justice honestly. Writing all this is making me seriously miss going to museums!
> 
> Feel free to come yell with me in the comments section, especially about how dumb Adora is with the many opportunities for her to realize what’s going on. I always love hearing your observations and thoughts :)


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